I suppose many blogs show a 'journey' of the person blogging. I had never intended that for this blog, it was simply a way for me to relieve myself of many of the thoughts and particularly irritations in my mind. It was also an outlet when I have felt powerless against what seems to have been an incessant chain of bad landlords and bad managers causing me such grief. However, recently I read a quotation from Buddha that said 'You will not be punished for your anger, but by your anger.' and I realised that I now understood that statement. In addition, in doing so I could see a great change from the attitude I had about anger back in October 2008: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2008/10/anger-reasons-i-have-it.html
Do not worry, this is not going to be some pitch about how I found God or Buddha or anything like that, it is simply me reflecting on why and how I came to hold an opposite opinion to one I held before. Regular readers will know that it is rare for me to shift my opinion on anything which is what makes this case unusual. At the time I could see the reasons for having anger and it did make me feel good. I felt just as powerless as I do these days facing up to the weight of the economy, finding sustained work and maintaining a place to live. Constantly I seemed to encounter people who wanted to rub my face in the mud and I had no ability to get back at them. That has not changed, I have a manager who treats me as some combination between a rude idiot and an aggressive threat and picks me up on rules she has made up after the fact. That is the second manager I have had like that and between them they have ruined my career. I was able to get away from landlords in 2007 but since being made redundant in 2009 I have regularly faced the worry of having the house repossessed and have only be saved by loans from my family and HM Revenue & Customs accepting that it had wrongly taxed me £16,000 back in 2007. Thus, problems have not gone away from me and, in fact, unemployment is far higher now and the economy in much a worse state than back in 2008 making the near future appear even bleaker.
What has changed is that I realised that anger was a drug. Some people facing the difficulties I was facing and feeling so powerless of oppose them would have turned to alcohol or narcotics or over-eating, perhaps to violence or self-harm. Some people are able to buckle down and simply tolerate what is being inflicted on them, but they are rare. We live in a society where public anger is now incredibly commonplace. Every time you drive, every time you go to a supermarket or try to check in for an aeroplane or to catch a train there is a good chance in the UK that you will see unbridled fury. Typically it is not over anything major, usually the reverse, that someone is driving at a different speed to you or will not let you into a queue or is simply in the wrong car or you cannot find the product you want or it has sold out or the company has made a mistake on your ticket or the flight or train has been cancelled. These are nothing compared to the anger you should feel against a government which is destroying opportunities, education, pensions and the health service and telling us we should be glad about it. Yet, while we know we can do absolutely nothing to change David Cameron's mind, we feel, however unlikely, that if we shout and make a fuss, we can squeeze out some change to our benefit; the car driver will feel ashamed or we will be 'bumped up' on to a flight or a train. Over the past decades we have been tutored to believe this by what we witness in public and on television programmes. It is strength by the sense that is so powerful of resentment against those who are getting some that we are not.
Over the past few years, even before I went into counselling as a result of mistreatment in my current job, I came to realise that anger achieved very little, no more than getting drunk would do. It made me feel good for a short time but the come down in terms of high blood pressure and constipation were just like a hangover after alcohol and actually made it harder to deal with the problems the next day. Being angry you see things only from your own perspective. You know your limits and forget that those around you do not. This was the impact on the woman and boy who lived in my house. They saw me shouting and hitting the furniture and wondered if it would be them next that I would hit. They saw me revving the car engine and felt powerless as they had no control over whether I rammed into the car in front of me or not. Reassurance and even repeated examples when nothing dire occurs makes it no less frightening to them wondering if 'this time' something more severe would occur.
This links to the next issue is that even in a life when everything seems a battle there are scraps of light. Not going all religious, this is simple things like having a good meal or just all of you sat in front of the television or just laughing about something silly or remembering a good day. They may only be scraps but I found these were being over-shadowed literally by the 'fear and loathing'. In turn this meant that I did not even have these scraps of happiness to fall back on so meaning that I then lacked the kind of resources I needed to deal well with all the nastiness I was facing, especially at work. The two worlds were contaminating each other and that meant there was no refuge. It was easy to get into a vicious circle. Whilst unemployment dropped me into new problems it gave me the time to change things. Partly it was because I was freed from having a nasty manager waiting to pick up any new imagined example of an error in order to hound me with it. Instead I was in my home all the time and had reasonably behaving job centre staff to deal with once per fortnight rather than malicious colleagues every day. In between applying for jobs, I also took the opportunity to look at anger management. This came in part from prompting from the woman who lived in my house, but also from having just one too many anger hangovers - constipation concentrates the mind very well.
Then I found that it is incredibly difficult to get help with anger management. My experience in this respect was very much the same as when I tried to seek help as I came closer to being unable to pay my mortgage. I contacted the building society when I had enough money to pay three months' mortgage payments and they would not discuss the issue with me. They said I had to be down to the final month's payment before they could even talk about it. To me this seemed ridiculous. They did not seem to realise that talking about the situation would have taken some pressure off me and most likely would have meant better performance at interviews and so the chance of getting a job to pay the mortgage. The same situation occurred with anger management. I found that in my town the last courses in anger management had ended two years earlier and that nowadays they only train counsellors in anger management for counties around; I would have had to travel to London for such help. Anger management in my town is only available to people who have been referred to it by the courts or social welfare. Thus, as with defaulting with the mortgage, it was only at the final stage that help became available. To me this seems short-sighted, but I guess it comes from targeting money at those who need it the most rather than preventing problems from developing.
Given that I could find no groups or individuals to help, I thought 'well, I am an intelligent man, surely there are some books or something I can use'. Well it turned out that I could find no books on anger management, again except for professionals counselling people rather than for those suffering from anger problems. I guess the sense is that someone suffering anger will not be able to see that they need help. However, I was able to find bits of references from extensive internet searches to Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). This sounded rather alarmingly like some pseudo-science, but actually turned out to be something legitimate. It would have been the approach I would have been exposed to if I had applied for one of the courses two years earlier. What I liked was that looked to treat causes rather than symptoms. There is a lot on the internet about methods to reduce anger such as meditation but these did not seem feasible when you are driving and experience 'road rage'. The NLP advocates likened most anger management to fixing a tyre when you had driven over broken glass and their method as being one that took you down a road without broken glass. Anyway, from various sources I found exercises that I was able to do on my own. Surprisingly, I found I quickly got into a 'virtuous circle' as being able to break the narcotic pleasure of anger I saw it was only doing harm and as anger became rarer it lost the psychological 'high' and feeling of power it had once given. I was then able to recover those scraps of life that made me happy and in turn the two people living in my house felt more reassured so a feedback loop developed,
I have not reached a situation in which I am never angry, especially when dealing with computer games. However, I can identify the symptoms so much faster and change what I am doing. Probably the largest change has come in driving, knowing that I am giving power to worthless people if I get worked up when they hoot or flash or shout at me. They are dangerous drivers and I need to get away from them, typically slowing down helps in that situation. I think I felt I had a 'right' to anger something which was exacerbated because I was told I had other rights, no right to work, no right to enjoy a house without hassle, no right not to be treated as an idiot/inappropriate/to be dismissed, no right to drive my car without being forced off the road and so on. However, I see now that the anger actually just made the things that I had under-valued, have less value. Anger contaminates everything it touches and you need to be going in the opposite direction. If you can derive happiness from lots of small and simple things then you become more robust. You do not need a god to show you that, you can do it yourself. Once you do, you then build up a reserve of some sort of energy that allows you to resist the trouble people seem so intent on pressing down on you, much more effectively. Another trick that I have learnt since from counselling is to keep home and work in different silos, but that is a story for another day.
Showing posts with label anger. Show all posts
Showing posts with label anger. Show all posts
Friday, 9 March 2012
Monday, 8 December 2008
Persecuting Students
As I travel around the South of England and elsewhere in the UK I pick up odd local leaflets and I came across one this week which fitted in with attitudes I have been picking up in a number of towns. I noticed it a couple of years ago in Southampton when the council started complaining about the number of streets that had students living in them. With 36,000 students in total at the city's two universities with in a total population of 217,000 people in the city at the last census in 2001, it is not surprising that students are prominent. University student numbers have rocketed since the 1990s with the government aiming to have 50% of 18 year olds in nay year attending university. There are currently 800,000 people who are 18 this year, which means the objective is 400,000 university students each year. Given that most undergraduate courses last 3 years, that means potentially 1.2 million students just doing undergraduate degrees at one time. This level is being reached with 451,000 students starting undergraduate courses in 2008 plus 13,000 student nurses, though of the total number of undergraduate students from outside the EU was 240,000 so possibly 50-60,000 new non-EU students each year as many of them go on to postgraduate courses or research. Anyway, we have hundreds of thousands of students in the UK and the level is likely to increase. After a small dip in 2006-7 recruitment has picked up again. The government policy is to encourage and sustain such levels.
Of course the population in towns seem to want anything different. The only city I have visited that seemed to like the money students bring in is Portsmouth which reckoned their parents visiting alone broung £26 million to the city which only has one university with 19,000 students of whom 3,000 are from overseas. It seems to every other town I visit students are loathed and are seen as mucking up the supposed local community feel of towns. Of course, in fact through stimulating hatred they create a negative integration of the community which ranks up against them. This was clearly expressed in the leaflet I saw. It did not ask if you had 'student problems' it simply stated that you did in this area and that they were reducing the value of your property. It then gave a whole long list of people to telephone in order to harrass students, though it whined that the police were pretty powerless. Clearly the author of the leaflet who gives his name sees all students as bad and needing constant harrassment.
I accept that there are noisy students, but they are the minority. There are also very noisy families, noisy elderly people, noisy single working men and women. Interestingly a lot of the problems the leaflets says are cause by students are: wheely bins on the pavement, overgrown hedges, cars on the pavement and 'To Let' signs are actually problems caused by all sorts of people. Many students do not have cars and in most of the streets I drive down the bulk of vehicles parked on the pavement are company vans and 4 x 4s driven by wealthy men and women, not students. Wheely bins get pulled on to the pavement by dustbin men not the public so in any street you will find them all on the pavement at any one time. Overgrown hedges and 'To Let' signs are not things that students control, these are the responsibility of the landlords/letting agents, who I feel are actually responsible for much of the bad problems in towns by not tending to the properties they rent out and constantly moving people on. When you are being hounded by a landlord you have no pride in the place where you live. In my street eight houses almost in a row, have been emptied even though the tenants have only been there four months, because the letting agency went bankrupt and the properties have been taken over by someone else.
As with all groups in a community there are always some people who cause problems, but students are not over-represented in this group. Should we throw out every family with young children because the children on one family run around stealing things, breaking windows and so on? No, because the other ninety families in the street are fine. What are these anti-student protestors seeking? All students purged from a town? Young people to behave like middle-aged people? They have no rational plan, they simply want to get angry and to turn their hatred and prejudice against someone. People have come down on assaults (verbal and physical) on asylum seekers and immigrants so these angry bigoted people have sought out a new target and see students as an easy one. Within increasing numbers of students coming from abroad it allows racial prejudice to come in through the back door too.
Ironically seeing university students as 'outsiders' is increasingly wrong. A lot of this is due to the cost of study. In Scotland 60% of students go to their local university, in England it is over 33% and on average all students now are likely to travel only 28 miles (45 Km) to attend university if they are from working class background and 63 miles (101 Km) if they come from middle class background. Thus most of the UK students studying at a university these days will come from the same town as the university or the surrounding county (of course not all towns have universities and some have two which will have an impact, by definition though people have to leave rural areas and small towns if they want to go to university, they cannot attend their 'local' one). More university students than ever before live with their parents while they are studying. Half of students have to do paid work to pay for basic living expenses and most students do as much paid work as they do study, adding up to 31-40 hours per week for these things combined. So, in fact, the student of 2008, does not resemble students of 'The Young Ones' (1982), they work a lot and they tend to study in the town where they live or the nearest urban area to their parental home. Students make up a great deal of staff across the service sector from health care and especially care for the elderly, to working in your local pub or shop, without their cheap labour a lot of these places would close down (check out how many students are working in your average high street, they cannot all be replaced by immigrants).
So, persecution of students is as bad as prejudice against any group in society. It is simply being used by ignorant, brutal men and women to let their anger out at something rather really trying to improve themselves rather than looking around trying to find a new target. A lot of the 'student problem' is in fact the more pervasive 'landlord problem' and I see no-one sending out leaflets about their nasty behaviour.
Of course the population in towns seem to want anything different. The only city I have visited that seemed to like the money students bring in is Portsmouth which reckoned their parents visiting alone broung £26 million to the city which only has one university with 19,000 students of whom 3,000 are from overseas. It seems to every other town I visit students are loathed and are seen as mucking up the supposed local community feel of towns. Of course, in fact through stimulating hatred they create a negative integration of the community which ranks up against them. This was clearly expressed in the leaflet I saw. It did not ask if you had 'student problems' it simply stated that you did in this area and that they were reducing the value of your property. It then gave a whole long list of people to telephone in order to harrass students, though it whined that the police were pretty powerless. Clearly the author of the leaflet who gives his name sees all students as bad and needing constant harrassment.
I accept that there are noisy students, but they are the minority. There are also very noisy families, noisy elderly people, noisy single working men and women. Interestingly a lot of the problems the leaflets says are cause by students are: wheely bins on the pavement, overgrown hedges, cars on the pavement and 'To Let' signs are actually problems caused by all sorts of people. Many students do not have cars and in most of the streets I drive down the bulk of vehicles parked on the pavement are company vans and 4 x 4s driven by wealthy men and women, not students. Wheely bins get pulled on to the pavement by dustbin men not the public so in any street you will find them all on the pavement at any one time. Overgrown hedges and 'To Let' signs are not things that students control, these are the responsibility of the landlords/letting agents, who I feel are actually responsible for much of the bad problems in towns by not tending to the properties they rent out and constantly moving people on. When you are being hounded by a landlord you have no pride in the place where you live. In my street eight houses almost in a row, have been emptied even though the tenants have only been there four months, because the letting agency went bankrupt and the properties have been taken over by someone else.
As with all groups in a community there are always some people who cause problems, but students are not over-represented in this group. Should we throw out every family with young children because the children on one family run around stealing things, breaking windows and so on? No, because the other ninety families in the street are fine. What are these anti-student protestors seeking? All students purged from a town? Young people to behave like middle-aged people? They have no rational plan, they simply want to get angry and to turn their hatred and prejudice against someone. People have come down on assaults (verbal and physical) on asylum seekers and immigrants so these angry bigoted people have sought out a new target and see students as an easy one. Within increasing numbers of students coming from abroad it allows racial prejudice to come in through the back door too.
Ironically seeing university students as 'outsiders' is increasingly wrong. A lot of this is due to the cost of study. In Scotland 60% of students go to their local university, in England it is over 33% and on average all students now are likely to travel only 28 miles (45 Km) to attend university if they are from working class background and 63 miles (101 Km) if they come from middle class background. Thus most of the UK students studying at a university these days will come from the same town as the university or the surrounding county (of course not all towns have universities and some have two which will have an impact, by definition though people have to leave rural areas and small towns if they want to go to university, they cannot attend their 'local' one). More university students than ever before live with their parents while they are studying. Half of students have to do paid work to pay for basic living expenses and most students do as much paid work as they do study, adding up to 31-40 hours per week for these things combined. So, in fact, the student of 2008, does not resemble students of 'The Young Ones' (1982), they work a lot and they tend to study in the town where they live or the nearest urban area to their parental home. Students make up a great deal of staff across the service sector from health care and especially care for the elderly, to working in your local pub or shop, without their cheap labour a lot of these places would close down (check out how many students are working in your average high street, they cannot all be replaced by immigrants).
So, persecution of students is as bad as prejudice against any group in society. It is simply being used by ignorant, brutal men and women to let their anger out at something rather really trying to improve themselves rather than looking around trying to find a new target. A lot of the 'student problem' is in fact the more pervasive 'landlord problem' and I see no-one sending out leaflets about their nasty behaviour.
Thursday, 4 December 2008
The Rise of the Indignitaries
The term 'indignitaries' was one that seems to have been coined by 'The Guardian' newspaper a couple of weeks ago. To mean it seemed so perfectly to sum up a trend in British society which relates to things that I have been touching on periodically, namely that British people love getting angry. An indignitary is someone who enjoys venting their anger, to such an extent that they will often go back and get angry about things that did not irritate them at the time and certainly they made no complaint about.
Clearly this term has arisen over the complaints regarding the Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand radio broadcast which involved telephoning the elderly actor Andrew Sachs (born 1930 in Berlin interestingly) and leaving lewd messages about his granddaughter, Georgina Baillie (born 1985). Baillie is a burlesque dancer who performs under the name Voluptua with a troupe called Satanic Sluts, so not the innocent teenager I imagine many complainants envisaged. The Radio 2 programme was recorded on 16th October and broadcast on 18th October. At the time there were only two complaints to the BBC about the programme because of crude language. However, it was only subsequently that complaints came in about the phonecall 'prank'. By 29th October it had risen to 18,000 and the following day 27,000. Now it would be interesting to know how many of those people actually listened to the radio programme. Radio 2 does have 12-13 million listeners over a given week, but given its 'comfy', easy-listening approach I am uncertain how well the Ross-Brand programme sat with the rest of its output anyway.
Baillie herself demanded that both me be sacked and portrayed them as being 'beneath contempt'. Interestingly the focus was on sexual activity with this woman rather than the reference to Sachs killing himself. Partly this is because media coverage of Baillie allows pictures of a burlesque dance in her corset to be included rather than pictures of an elderly male actor. Brand was sacked and Ross was suspended. They apologised for what they said, but Baillie and her father wanted personal apologies and were dissatisfied that they did not receive them. Sachs who has been working in the media for fifty years, made no comment, probably because he has been there and seen it all in his career. Whilst the broadcast was offensive to an old man (I have no sympathy for Baillie who has made herself a lewd spectacle anyway so must expect such responses) the anger was less on what it did to him than allowing an opportunity for people to get angry. This is because, many people in the UK actually like lewd material (notably 'The Sun' newspaper which was very indignant about the broadcast but features lurid pictures of scantily clad women regularly) but also enjoy being indignant. This muddies things and has drowned any debate about how broadcasters should interact with people in the public eye, people who have primarily retired from the public eye and so on. I am sure the bulk of people who complained simply heard 'respected elderly actor', 'granddaughter' and that was enough for them to boil over.
I have been prone to this tendency myself. Reading 'The Devil's Horsemen' by James Chambers (1979) I felt furious that the barbaric behaviour of Mongol invaders of the 13th century went unpunished, in turn I was angered by Mongolia's lionising of Genghis Khan and that easily could have led to racism against Mongolians. This might seem very obscure but it is easy for all of us to fall into that sense of anger often about things over which we have no control. Where it is more dangerous is when our unnecessary anger can have a real impact. Of course someone becoming racist will impact, but there are greater problems when it is more immediate. I think Brand and Ross probably needed to be admonished but I was upset when people then wanted some purge, especially of 'Mock the Week' which has been the only political satire programme showing in the UK (I exclude poor quality US shows) in the past couple of years and political satire is vital for democracy. Some of the humour can be shocking but in a way which actually draws us up short and think about issues which is something very important.
As I have said before, anger is so popular in the UK for two reasons. Most UK people have little future ahead of them and at the moment that future is becoming more bleak with a sharp rise in unemployment and house repossessions. The British also thoroughly enjoy moaning (like complaining but without actually directing it towards anyone who can do anything about it). It is the primary occupation of many people in the UK, especially the elderly and they are probably unique in Europe in loving it so much. Moaning is the outlet which actually lets UK people tolerate how badly they are actually treated by their government, retailers, their employers, etc., in ways that no other nationality would tolerate.
Anger in the UK has stepped up a gear in the past 20 years as the British people have had to face worse and worse service and abuse from service providers such as transport companies, utility companies, etc. These days people know that unless they shout they are going to get nothing. Service providers have choked off this ability by having all this refusal of talking to abusive people and in certain contexts such as airports regularly threatening them with anti-terrorist powers even against mild complaints, such as a pregnant woman needing help with a trolley or complaints about damaged luggage. In the context of the powerlessness that the average person in the UK faces on a daily basis, anger is now the only tool left to get over that sense of futility that so many of us encounter. Of course the outlets for anger themselves are being clamped down. Either they need to leave us some outlet or they will have to start doping us with calming tablets as in 'Brave New World' (1932) which featured the drug 'Soma' with the slogan 'a gram is better than a damn'. One method at the moment to give some feeling of control to the population is all these talent shows for which the public telephone in to select who stays or goes. No wonder there is a plethora of such programmes including 'Big Brother', 'I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here', 'The X Factor', 'Strictly Come Dancing', etc. Of course as politicians know the public are fickle and the judges on these programmes increasingly brindle against the public's choices which are often based on aspects that are unrelated to the format of the programme.
So, being an indignitary is about getting back some of that self-respect, some of that control that we so lack in contemporary Britain. Self-righteousness always makes you feel good and being indignant allows you to demonstrate just how right you are and more than that, that you are a person who is willing to stand out and make a point. Ironically, actually the opposite is the case. Being indignant is about joining the bandwagon, proving that you are equally as good at getting angry, as equally as righteous as your family, neighbours, colleagues, etc. Perhaps this tells us about the decline of religion in Britain. These feelings of being part of a special, right group once came from being in a religious denomination. Now, with church attendance at only 7% of UK people who say they are Christian going to church regularly, compared to 20% in Canada and 43% in the USA (though these figures have been questioned it is clear that attendance in English-speaking North America exceeds UK attendance by many times) where do people turn to get those naturally desired feelings? They unite together to complain to the BBC and demonstrate their righteousness and how they are part of the moral element of British society.
Ultimately I can understand why UK people behave in this way, it comes down to the fact that I dislike what they get indignant about. I have spoken before about my incomprehension of the hatred for speed limits on roads and in particular of safety cameras. I can understand why people dislike immigrants but I loathe the hatred they express of them and would point to how much harm such racist attitudes do to the UK. I can understand why people hate paedophiles, but I see danger too in vigilante attacks especially when aimed at paediatricians. Why do people engage in violence in order to get fox hunting back - it is cruel and unnecessary. There are many things which people should get angry about but they do not. They do not get angry about how we are bullied by landlords, ripped off by utility companies, have our families killed by speeding cars, how education is becoming so segregated, how so many children are in poverty in the UK and have no opportunity to escape, how many old people die each year of cold, how many homeless people there are, how people are bullied at work and have no security in their work, how working parents find it almost impossible to access childcare, how little politicians listen to us, how we need more schools and hospitals, how we need cheap public transport and affordable housing, how our civil liberties are being eroded, how racist political groups are getting more powerful and will wreck our cities, how patchy recycling is, how much litter people dump and how much fly-tipping they do, the use of knives and guns to kill young people, binge drinking, those are just the things I can think of off the top of my head. I am sure you could find many more.
So next time there is some moron of a comedian saying something foolish turn off your radio or your television and go and email the prime minister or your local councillor and get angry about something that is worth getting angry about. For too long we have been encouraged to think we can change nothing, but that is because so many of us have stopped trying. We have a real strength in our fury, but do not fritter it away, direct it into something which can make the UK and the world better. Be proud to be an indignitary, be one with dignity, start combating speeding in your street, not simply whine about Russell Brand.
P.P. - 04/02/2008: I remembered another type of indignitary from may days in the civil service. Back in the early 2000s I wrote a piece about the wartime code-breaking at Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire where the British decoded the German Enigma cyphers. I made a special effort to mention the Polish contribution to this achievement. The Polish intelligence agencies were trying to break the cyphers before the war broke out and Pole smuggled out the vital encyphering wheels after Poland had been invaded in 1939 at immense personal risk. Poles also served at Bletchley Park. Less than a day after completing my piece I had an email complaining that no-one writing about breaking Enigma ever mentioned the Polish contribution and that I was no different. I felt terribly offended especially as I had taken effort to feature the full extent of the Polish input. I pointed this out to the complainant and it became clear they had not actually read what I had written but had simply assumed I would leave out the Poles from the story. I can understand that after reading numerous pieces in which that was a case, it was a fair assumption, but it blunts your compaint when you do not pay attention to what is said in a particular piece and in this case complaining at someone who sympathised with your case. So, knee-jerk responses are never healthy.
Another indignatry behaviour I was irritated by is the Israelis being unwilling to accept historical maps that do not show Israel on them even if they show a time when that state did not exist. I do not complain because I do not see the UK on a map of the British Isles period or the USA missing from maps of 18th century North America or Poland missing from a map of Europe of 1890. The world changes and maps should reflect what is happening at the time not what people wish is/was/had been the case. It weakens your case when you respond in this blanket way. Anyway which Israel should be shown? The one of Biblical times (before or during or after Roman occupation?) or the one of 1948? 1967? 1973? 2009? They all look different.
Caveat: I have nothing against Americans, Jews, Israelis or Poles, just individuals who happen to come from those nations and behave in an indignitary manner.
Clearly this term has arisen over the complaints regarding the Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand radio broadcast which involved telephoning the elderly actor Andrew Sachs (born 1930 in Berlin interestingly) and leaving lewd messages about his granddaughter, Georgina Baillie (born 1985). Baillie is a burlesque dancer who performs under the name Voluptua with a troupe called Satanic Sluts, so not the innocent teenager I imagine many complainants envisaged. The Radio 2 programme was recorded on 16th October and broadcast on 18th October. At the time there were only two complaints to the BBC about the programme because of crude language. However, it was only subsequently that complaints came in about the phonecall 'prank'. By 29th October it had risen to 18,000 and the following day 27,000. Now it would be interesting to know how many of those people actually listened to the radio programme. Radio 2 does have 12-13 million listeners over a given week, but given its 'comfy', easy-listening approach I am uncertain how well the Ross-Brand programme sat with the rest of its output anyway.
Baillie herself demanded that both me be sacked and portrayed them as being 'beneath contempt'. Interestingly the focus was on sexual activity with this woman rather than the reference to Sachs killing himself. Partly this is because media coverage of Baillie allows pictures of a burlesque dance in her corset to be included rather than pictures of an elderly male actor. Brand was sacked and Ross was suspended. They apologised for what they said, but Baillie and her father wanted personal apologies and were dissatisfied that they did not receive them. Sachs who has been working in the media for fifty years, made no comment, probably because he has been there and seen it all in his career. Whilst the broadcast was offensive to an old man (I have no sympathy for Baillie who has made herself a lewd spectacle anyway so must expect such responses) the anger was less on what it did to him than allowing an opportunity for people to get angry. This is because, many people in the UK actually like lewd material (notably 'The Sun' newspaper which was very indignant about the broadcast but features lurid pictures of scantily clad women regularly) but also enjoy being indignant. This muddies things and has drowned any debate about how broadcasters should interact with people in the public eye, people who have primarily retired from the public eye and so on. I am sure the bulk of people who complained simply heard 'respected elderly actor', 'granddaughter' and that was enough for them to boil over.
I have been prone to this tendency myself. Reading 'The Devil's Horsemen' by James Chambers (1979) I felt furious that the barbaric behaviour of Mongol invaders of the 13th century went unpunished, in turn I was angered by Mongolia's lionising of Genghis Khan and that easily could have led to racism against Mongolians. This might seem very obscure but it is easy for all of us to fall into that sense of anger often about things over which we have no control. Where it is more dangerous is when our unnecessary anger can have a real impact. Of course someone becoming racist will impact, but there are greater problems when it is more immediate. I think Brand and Ross probably needed to be admonished but I was upset when people then wanted some purge, especially of 'Mock the Week' which has been the only political satire programme showing in the UK (I exclude poor quality US shows) in the past couple of years and political satire is vital for democracy. Some of the humour can be shocking but in a way which actually draws us up short and think about issues which is something very important.
As I have said before, anger is so popular in the UK for two reasons. Most UK people have little future ahead of them and at the moment that future is becoming more bleak with a sharp rise in unemployment and house repossessions. The British also thoroughly enjoy moaning (like complaining but without actually directing it towards anyone who can do anything about it). It is the primary occupation of many people in the UK, especially the elderly and they are probably unique in Europe in loving it so much. Moaning is the outlet which actually lets UK people tolerate how badly they are actually treated by their government, retailers, their employers, etc., in ways that no other nationality would tolerate.
Anger in the UK has stepped up a gear in the past 20 years as the British people have had to face worse and worse service and abuse from service providers such as transport companies, utility companies, etc. These days people know that unless they shout they are going to get nothing. Service providers have choked off this ability by having all this refusal of talking to abusive people and in certain contexts such as airports regularly threatening them with anti-terrorist powers even against mild complaints, such as a pregnant woman needing help with a trolley or complaints about damaged luggage. In the context of the powerlessness that the average person in the UK faces on a daily basis, anger is now the only tool left to get over that sense of futility that so many of us encounter. Of course the outlets for anger themselves are being clamped down. Either they need to leave us some outlet or they will have to start doping us with calming tablets as in 'Brave New World' (1932) which featured the drug 'Soma' with the slogan 'a gram is better than a damn'. One method at the moment to give some feeling of control to the population is all these talent shows for which the public telephone in to select who stays or goes. No wonder there is a plethora of such programmes including 'Big Brother', 'I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here', 'The X Factor', 'Strictly Come Dancing', etc. Of course as politicians know the public are fickle and the judges on these programmes increasingly brindle against the public's choices which are often based on aspects that are unrelated to the format of the programme.
So, being an indignitary is about getting back some of that self-respect, some of that control that we so lack in contemporary Britain. Self-righteousness always makes you feel good and being indignant allows you to demonstrate just how right you are and more than that, that you are a person who is willing to stand out and make a point. Ironically, actually the opposite is the case. Being indignant is about joining the bandwagon, proving that you are equally as good at getting angry, as equally as righteous as your family, neighbours, colleagues, etc. Perhaps this tells us about the decline of religion in Britain. These feelings of being part of a special, right group once came from being in a religious denomination. Now, with church attendance at only 7% of UK people who say they are Christian going to church regularly, compared to 20% in Canada and 43% in the USA (though these figures have been questioned it is clear that attendance in English-speaking North America exceeds UK attendance by many times) where do people turn to get those naturally desired feelings? They unite together to complain to the BBC and demonstrate their righteousness and how they are part of the moral element of British society.
Ultimately I can understand why UK people behave in this way, it comes down to the fact that I dislike what they get indignant about. I have spoken before about my incomprehension of the hatred for speed limits on roads and in particular of safety cameras. I can understand why people dislike immigrants but I loathe the hatred they express of them and would point to how much harm such racist attitudes do to the UK. I can understand why people hate paedophiles, but I see danger too in vigilante attacks especially when aimed at paediatricians. Why do people engage in violence in order to get fox hunting back - it is cruel and unnecessary. There are many things which people should get angry about but they do not. They do not get angry about how we are bullied by landlords, ripped off by utility companies, have our families killed by speeding cars, how education is becoming so segregated, how so many children are in poverty in the UK and have no opportunity to escape, how many old people die each year of cold, how many homeless people there are, how people are bullied at work and have no security in their work, how working parents find it almost impossible to access childcare, how little politicians listen to us, how we need more schools and hospitals, how we need cheap public transport and affordable housing, how our civil liberties are being eroded, how racist political groups are getting more powerful and will wreck our cities, how patchy recycling is, how much litter people dump and how much fly-tipping they do, the use of knives and guns to kill young people, binge drinking, those are just the things I can think of off the top of my head. I am sure you could find many more.
So next time there is some moron of a comedian saying something foolish turn off your radio or your television and go and email the prime minister or your local councillor and get angry about something that is worth getting angry about. For too long we have been encouraged to think we can change nothing, but that is because so many of us have stopped trying. We have a real strength in our fury, but do not fritter it away, direct it into something which can make the UK and the world better. Be proud to be an indignitary, be one with dignity, start combating speeding in your street, not simply whine about Russell Brand.
P.P. - 04/02/2008: I remembered another type of indignitary from may days in the civil service. Back in the early 2000s I wrote a piece about the wartime code-breaking at Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire where the British decoded the German Enigma cyphers. I made a special effort to mention the Polish contribution to this achievement. The Polish intelligence agencies were trying to break the cyphers before the war broke out and Pole smuggled out the vital encyphering wheels after Poland had been invaded in 1939 at immense personal risk. Poles also served at Bletchley Park. Less than a day after completing my piece I had an email complaining that no-one writing about breaking Enigma ever mentioned the Polish contribution and that I was no different. I felt terribly offended especially as I had taken effort to feature the full extent of the Polish input. I pointed this out to the complainant and it became clear they had not actually read what I had written but had simply assumed I would leave out the Poles from the story. I can understand that after reading numerous pieces in which that was a case, it was a fair assumption, but it blunts your compaint when you do not pay attention to what is said in a particular piece and in this case complaining at someone who sympathised with your case. So, knee-jerk responses are never healthy.
Another indignatry behaviour I was irritated by is the Israelis being unwilling to accept historical maps that do not show Israel on them even if they show a time when that state did not exist. I do not complain because I do not see the UK on a map of the British Isles period or the USA missing from maps of 18th century North America or Poland missing from a map of Europe of 1890. The world changes and maps should reflect what is happening at the time not what people wish is/was/had been the case. It weakens your case when you respond in this blanket way. Anyway which Israel should be shown? The one of Biblical times (before or during or after Roman occupation?) or the one of 1948? 1967? 1973? 2009? They all look different.
Caveat: I have nothing against Americans, Jews, Israelis or Poles, just individuals who happen to come from those nations and behave in an indignitary manner.
Monday, 6 October 2008
Anger - the Reasons I Have It
I have just been watching a two-part programme called 'Losing It' which comedian, writer and yachtsman, Griff Rhys Jones produced for the BBC. It looked at anger and its implications. As many commentators have noted (including myself back in May 2007 and June 2008) the World, especially the UK is becoming an angrier place. We have a 'rage' for everything from the life-threatening 'road rage' to the less dangerous 'trolley rage' in supermarkets. As I have noted, we are tutored in how to behave by what we see on television with sportsmen (and some sportswomen) having fights on the pitch and ordinary people raging at airline check-in desks for us to study. The widespread abuse of alcohol and drugs in the UK just adds to this tendency, especially among the young, not only men but also women. To some degree part of this stems from the fact that in the UK most of us are powerless to change anything in our lives and are constantly reminded of the fact. Politics is so sewn up that we (nor Gordon Brown) can do anything about rising costs or getting a decent school for our children or proper care for our elderly relatives. Consequently we explode at those people we can 'control', the person cutting us up in the car or looking at us in a strange way and it gives us, for a moment, a sense that we can assert some control. Ironically, in that moment we actually lose control but it does make us feel better.
Rhys Jones did note, however, that in making the angry person feel better, it makes those around them feel much worse in particular vulnerable, even if they have no fear that they will be hit or shouted at, it is just the 'electricity' around an angry person that makes them feel uncomfortable. Anger is often a cry to help, which is why we often get angry around people we are close to and love, because we feel we have permission to show our vulnerable side in their presence in a way we would not with strangers. Becoming visibly angry is showing a vulnerable side as it is when you have no rational thought and sometimes even lose physical control. However, often those close to us cannot accept the burden of that vulnerability not being let out bit-by-bit but in an intense way in a short period of time. There are many forms of anger, but for most people, they stem from feeling weak and unable to affect outcome. In this way, we are, as Rhys Jones showed, like toddlers who have tantrums. Toddlers are aware of their vunerability and their inability to alter the people or environment around them and so all they have left is their anger which they have in the most physical and vocal way possible.
To some extent, modern society, stripping so many of us of any control of our lives, infantilises us. People are unable financially to stand on themselves until into their 30s and 40s, and are often economically dependent on their parents for much of their lives, so is it unsurprising that as a result we cling to childish behaviour so much longer? I am almost 41 and without my parents I would still be living in scummy rented accommodation. I do think people do get more angry than in the past, but that is partly because in our youth we are told the big lie that we can 'have it all'. In the past people were told from childhood onwards that so much would be denied to them. Of course, most things are still denied to us, but we are lied to constantly both as children and as adults, by the media, so it makes it harder to accept the truth when it hits us. The other thing, is that we have lost a sense of shame. People flaunt so much of what would have been private once, this is in terms of sexuality, in how we dress, etc., also in terms of our wealth and possessions, but in particular in terms of our emotions. Though British people do not behave to the extreme that Americans do (remember the tennis player John McEnroe's televised tantrums in the 1970s, though mirrored by British comedy versions, notably from John Cleese), but nowadays we are encouraged to express all our emotions whether joyful, sad or angry in public in a way that would have been strongly discouraged in the past. As I have noted before, there is almost a reward for this, as we see those who make the most fuss, winning what they want, so are tempted to follow their lead.
I also think we have a greater sense of pride and take slights more strongly than we would have done in the past. This was noticeable in the programme when Rhys Jones was interviewing Chanelle Hayes who had had a tantrum on the Channel 4 'reality' programme 'Big Brother'. He was talking about the televised trantrum with her, and she said it was a rare occurrence for her, but then began getting upset with Rhys Jones in the course of the short interview because he would not let her drone on with her self-justifying, and clearly untrue monologue, and then she took offence at what she felt was a slur on her character, when Rhys Jones was simply trying to ask her questions about the incident. As there is so little for us to be proud about, we defend even those little crumbs or put up a front of indignation as if we had a lot more to defend than is actually the case.
An interview with George Galloway, an MP who I have met, was interesting. He has 'indignation' rather than anger and clearly distinguished between losing one's temper and having this indignation against wrong. Of course he linked this to big issues not imagined slurs and petty things. However, most of us have lost any connection with the big issues. We know we can do nothing about them so lack the channels in which to put our indignation, say on temperance, religion, Communism, Fascism, unemployment, the poll tax, etc., that our ancestors would have done.
As I have noted before, I do have a temper. The programme showed that I am in the prime category for it on a number of grounds, bar having a raised level of testosterone. In some ways I am de facto in the camp of parents of young children, who are the people most prone to anger, due to the six year old living in my house. Anger is a natural part of not only human nature but also animals such as apes, so it is never going to be eliminated unless we adopt a 'Brave New World' approach and castrate and sedate all men. However, some individuals are more prone to it turning into a more aggressive form than others and I tick many of those boxes.
The first is that I am male and that we cannot shake off the need of anger and violence that meant our descendants survived when many others died out over the millenia. Though women are catching up in the anger stakes, partly because they sense their powerlessness, especially in trying to achieve things for their families. For me anger is not purely mental, it is physical too. I feel as if there is a bug jabbing into the base of my neck and another at the base of my spine and those two bugs are not sated and certainly not dismissed until I have shouted myself hoarse and my heart is thumping so heavily I can feel it against my chest cavity and my stomach is sour and I feel pain down there. This is not good for my health, but surely it is better than having this seething inside me over a sustained period, shouting, swearing, revving the car engine may have consequences, but they relieve the uncomfortable symptoms and when the bugs are jabbing at you that is all you can think of.
The other thing is that I care. If I did not give a damn about how people behave or how our society was run then there would be so much less to get angry about. I think there is a right way that the World should work and that people should behave. In some ways I am seeking to police what I see as unacceptable behaviour. This wish to police is at the root of road rage in particular. I drive with a very moral sense of what is the correct behaviour I want to see and will hoot or bellow at those who I feel are behaving inappropriately. I have set myself up as a guardian of the wider community. Partly this is because there are no other outlets for this attitude in modern society.
This is why there are people always willing to be police informants. Whilst it is not as visible this attitude is what drives people to write letters to the tax office or benefit office, 'shopping' (i.e. highlighting them to the authorities) people they feel are flouting the regulations, or in particular, exploiting the state to their advantage. For me I simply blog and as I have noted before that is the contemporary form of letter writing to authorities, with the added bonus that it can come to the attention of people who feel the same and can sympathise. Message boards, online conferencing, are excellent outlets for this mind set, though even here 'flaming', the electronic form of bellowing at people can become an issue.
I have an attention to detail which is another indicator of someone liable to get angry. This is because we can get offended by minor things being 'wrong' or out of place. I certainly get angered by behaviour which I feel is unfair as if the World must be in perfect balance in terms of justice (some people would say this is because I am a Libran, if you believe that) and at present I feel that the unjust, the greedy, the mean, the bullies, the torturers, the selfish, all have the upper hand to a greater extent than before, so there is even more to fight for than would 'normally' be the case. My attention to detail means there is anger on so many issues that can trigger me off. Also, I am not satisfied by a quick outburst. As I am a reflective person (over 200 blog postings this year alone) I mull over the things that make me angry, literally keeping my anger 'simmering' so it is far closer to the surface when I encounter the next issue to irritate me, than if I could finish off one issue before moving on to another.
The other element which I had not really thought about before was having low self-esteem. I suppose this relates to what I have said about feeling so powerless to achieve anything in contemporary Britain. However, it goes beyond that to say, not only can you not achieve anything in the future, but everything you have done in the past was also valueless. In our 'dog-eat-dog' business world, of course people say that to you. The worst bullying I suffered at work was based on saying that I could take no solo credit for anything I had produced in that job. I am a good team player and will often downplay my role, so to hear that was very hard and really sapped my self-esteem to the extent I felt there was no point in producing anything, and, of course, that was what the bully wanted as he had effectively removed a rival for promotion.
Of course, being someone with suicidal tendencies, as outlined here, I do have low self-esteem, so again that is likely to make me angry. It is, as I say, that when you hit rock bottom, all you have left is your anger, it is the last scrap of self-dignity that you have. It is the one thing that you can fire off which draws some attention and brings some value to you, if only, because you disrupt the lives, even for a short period, of the people moving around you. It literally gets your voice heard even if your words are not heard. Anger is something that needs no other interaction, you can do it alone. This is why it is difficult for others around you, especially those close to you, to cope with, because it unsettles them as it is a very selfish activity. Of course, other people behave equally as selfishly, but because they do it calmly it does not face the condemnation that anger does, thought it is as equally corrosive to relationships and society and is likely to be sustained than over in a short time.
Having watched 'Losing It', I feel I am more normal than I thought I was. I find there were particular character traits which make me more prone to anger and likely to sustain that over a longer period. I see no solutions. I am as powerless to alter my context as any other ordinary person in the UK today. The fact that I will lose my job and my house next year simply adds to that sense. It also reduces my self-esteem, because time after time, I have been shown that no matter how hard I work or how I behave I still can achieve nothing, certainly in terms of the stability I am yearning at this age, and I am simply buffeted from job to job and from house to house with no control over what happens next. I could stop paying attention to detail, but that is an element of my work, so would make me slapdash and less effective as an employee. I think having been this way for four decades, it would be difficult to shake off. So, I will stick with anger, it is the only little bit of pride I have left. After I have lost everything, I know I can still get angry and have my voice heard even if just for half-an-hour. Here is me shouting and it feels a little better.
Rhys Jones did note, however, that in making the angry person feel better, it makes those around them feel much worse in particular vulnerable, even if they have no fear that they will be hit or shouted at, it is just the 'electricity' around an angry person that makes them feel uncomfortable. Anger is often a cry to help, which is why we often get angry around people we are close to and love, because we feel we have permission to show our vulnerable side in their presence in a way we would not with strangers. Becoming visibly angry is showing a vulnerable side as it is when you have no rational thought and sometimes even lose physical control. However, often those close to us cannot accept the burden of that vulnerability not being let out bit-by-bit but in an intense way in a short period of time. There are many forms of anger, but for most people, they stem from feeling weak and unable to affect outcome. In this way, we are, as Rhys Jones showed, like toddlers who have tantrums. Toddlers are aware of their vunerability and their inability to alter the people or environment around them and so all they have left is their anger which they have in the most physical and vocal way possible.
To some extent, modern society, stripping so many of us of any control of our lives, infantilises us. People are unable financially to stand on themselves until into their 30s and 40s, and are often economically dependent on their parents for much of their lives, so is it unsurprising that as a result we cling to childish behaviour so much longer? I am almost 41 and without my parents I would still be living in scummy rented accommodation. I do think people do get more angry than in the past, but that is partly because in our youth we are told the big lie that we can 'have it all'. In the past people were told from childhood onwards that so much would be denied to them. Of course, most things are still denied to us, but we are lied to constantly both as children and as adults, by the media, so it makes it harder to accept the truth when it hits us. The other thing, is that we have lost a sense of shame. People flaunt so much of what would have been private once, this is in terms of sexuality, in how we dress, etc., also in terms of our wealth and possessions, but in particular in terms of our emotions. Though British people do not behave to the extreme that Americans do (remember the tennis player John McEnroe's televised tantrums in the 1970s, though mirrored by British comedy versions, notably from John Cleese), but nowadays we are encouraged to express all our emotions whether joyful, sad or angry in public in a way that would have been strongly discouraged in the past. As I have noted before, there is almost a reward for this, as we see those who make the most fuss, winning what they want, so are tempted to follow their lead.
I also think we have a greater sense of pride and take slights more strongly than we would have done in the past. This was noticeable in the programme when Rhys Jones was interviewing Chanelle Hayes who had had a tantrum on the Channel 4 'reality' programme 'Big Brother'. He was talking about the televised trantrum with her, and she said it was a rare occurrence for her, but then began getting upset with Rhys Jones in the course of the short interview because he would not let her drone on with her self-justifying, and clearly untrue monologue, and then she took offence at what she felt was a slur on her character, when Rhys Jones was simply trying to ask her questions about the incident. As there is so little for us to be proud about, we defend even those little crumbs or put up a front of indignation as if we had a lot more to defend than is actually the case.
An interview with George Galloway, an MP who I have met, was interesting. He has 'indignation' rather than anger and clearly distinguished between losing one's temper and having this indignation against wrong. Of course he linked this to big issues not imagined slurs and petty things. However, most of us have lost any connection with the big issues. We know we can do nothing about them so lack the channels in which to put our indignation, say on temperance, religion, Communism, Fascism, unemployment, the poll tax, etc., that our ancestors would have done.
As I have noted before, I do have a temper. The programme showed that I am in the prime category for it on a number of grounds, bar having a raised level of testosterone. In some ways I am de facto in the camp of parents of young children, who are the people most prone to anger, due to the six year old living in my house. Anger is a natural part of not only human nature but also animals such as apes, so it is never going to be eliminated unless we adopt a 'Brave New World' approach and castrate and sedate all men. However, some individuals are more prone to it turning into a more aggressive form than others and I tick many of those boxes.
The first is that I am male and that we cannot shake off the need of anger and violence that meant our descendants survived when many others died out over the millenia. Though women are catching up in the anger stakes, partly because they sense their powerlessness, especially in trying to achieve things for their families. For me anger is not purely mental, it is physical too. I feel as if there is a bug jabbing into the base of my neck and another at the base of my spine and those two bugs are not sated and certainly not dismissed until I have shouted myself hoarse and my heart is thumping so heavily I can feel it against my chest cavity and my stomach is sour and I feel pain down there. This is not good for my health, but surely it is better than having this seething inside me over a sustained period, shouting, swearing, revving the car engine may have consequences, but they relieve the uncomfortable symptoms and when the bugs are jabbing at you that is all you can think of.
The other thing is that I care. If I did not give a damn about how people behave or how our society was run then there would be so much less to get angry about. I think there is a right way that the World should work and that people should behave. In some ways I am seeking to police what I see as unacceptable behaviour. This wish to police is at the root of road rage in particular. I drive with a very moral sense of what is the correct behaviour I want to see and will hoot or bellow at those who I feel are behaving inappropriately. I have set myself up as a guardian of the wider community. Partly this is because there are no other outlets for this attitude in modern society.
This is why there are people always willing to be police informants. Whilst it is not as visible this attitude is what drives people to write letters to the tax office or benefit office, 'shopping' (i.e. highlighting them to the authorities) people they feel are flouting the regulations, or in particular, exploiting the state to their advantage. For me I simply blog and as I have noted before that is the contemporary form of letter writing to authorities, with the added bonus that it can come to the attention of people who feel the same and can sympathise. Message boards, online conferencing, are excellent outlets for this mind set, though even here 'flaming', the electronic form of bellowing at people can become an issue.
I have an attention to detail which is another indicator of someone liable to get angry. This is because we can get offended by minor things being 'wrong' or out of place. I certainly get angered by behaviour which I feel is unfair as if the World must be in perfect balance in terms of justice (some people would say this is because I am a Libran, if you believe that) and at present I feel that the unjust, the greedy, the mean, the bullies, the torturers, the selfish, all have the upper hand to a greater extent than before, so there is even more to fight for than would 'normally' be the case. My attention to detail means there is anger on so many issues that can trigger me off. Also, I am not satisfied by a quick outburst. As I am a reflective person (over 200 blog postings this year alone) I mull over the things that make me angry, literally keeping my anger 'simmering' so it is far closer to the surface when I encounter the next issue to irritate me, than if I could finish off one issue before moving on to another.
The other element which I had not really thought about before was having low self-esteem. I suppose this relates to what I have said about feeling so powerless to achieve anything in contemporary Britain. However, it goes beyond that to say, not only can you not achieve anything in the future, but everything you have done in the past was also valueless. In our 'dog-eat-dog' business world, of course people say that to you. The worst bullying I suffered at work was based on saying that I could take no solo credit for anything I had produced in that job. I am a good team player and will often downplay my role, so to hear that was very hard and really sapped my self-esteem to the extent I felt there was no point in producing anything, and, of course, that was what the bully wanted as he had effectively removed a rival for promotion.
Of course, being someone with suicidal tendencies, as outlined here, I do have low self-esteem, so again that is likely to make me angry. It is, as I say, that when you hit rock bottom, all you have left is your anger, it is the last scrap of self-dignity that you have. It is the one thing that you can fire off which draws some attention and brings some value to you, if only, because you disrupt the lives, even for a short period, of the people moving around you. It literally gets your voice heard even if your words are not heard. Anger is something that needs no other interaction, you can do it alone. This is why it is difficult for others around you, especially those close to you, to cope with, because it unsettles them as it is a very selfish activity. Of course, other people behave equally as selfishly, but because they do it calmly it does not face the condemnation that anger does, thought it is as equally corrosive to relationships and society and is likely to be sustained than over in a short time.
Having watched 'Losing It', I feel I am more normal than I thought I was. I find there were particular character traits which make me more prone to anger and likely to sustain that over a longer period. I see no solutions. I am as powerless to alter my context as any other ordinary person in the UK today. The fact that I will lose my job and my house next year simply adds to that sense. It also reduces my self-esteem, because time after time, I have been shown that no matter how hard I work or how I behave I still can achieve nothing, certainly in terms of the stability I am yearning at this age, and I am simply buffeted from job to job and from house to house with no control over what happens next. I could stop paying attention to detail, but that is an element of my work, so would make me slapdash and less effective as an employee. I think having been this way for four decades, it would be difficult to shake off. So, I will stick with anger, it is the only little bit of pride I have left. After I have lost everything, I know I can still get angry and have my voice heard even if just for half-an-hour. Here is me shouting and it feels a little better.
Monday, 9 June 2008
Is This the Mantra for UK Society of the 2000s?
I have to apologise for another posting stimulated by reading 'The Guardian'. I suppose this is why people buy newspapers in order to be informed and have their thoughts stimulated, but I suppose in this day and age when we are obliged to be seen to be unique and ever inventive I feel it is a cheat and that I should be constantly generating ideas of my own. I suppose it is also the fact that I notice now that no-one I know reads newspapers and certainly never discusses them so if I pipe up about something I have read it falls dead. The woman who lives in my house has no interest in current affairs and gets angry when it is implied that she is as prone to political and especially economic developments as the rest of us; she sees economic issues as simply between her and the other person whether they are a representative of a utility company or one of her customers, and nothing broader than that. To some degree this is a protection against us being brought down by all that is wrong in the world. My mother talked about this as being seen as something to do to prevent depression coming on, i.e. not worry about things that you cannot change such as starvation in Africa or bad political regimes. I find that a hard tenet to accept. I acknowledge it can reduce personal depression but surely it abdicates all control to those people who tell us not to worry ourselves about these things so that they can get on with being tyrants. I suppose my mother removes herself one step as she contributes to charities generously, especially people like Oxfam, so I suppose she does a little part to enable others who want to be involved to do so. Interestingly Oxfam now produce these brochures in which you purchase an item for a village say a well or a goat. They seem to have come to the conclusion, like those charities that provided child sponsorship that people have a difficulty comprehending fully starvation in a whole region but they can get their heads round providing food for a small village or one family or schooling for a child, it is on a human scale.
Sorry, I am rambling off. Back to the apology about newspaper-inspired blogging. The other thing for me is being of a liberal disposition, it is rare that I actually encounter people who are anywhere near in me political terms so they are very dismissive of any of my views. I remember in the early 1990s talking to man who said that everyone accepted that what Margaret Thatcher had done was necessary and good for the country and was incredulous that I did not accept that. Of course nowadays even the Labour Party seems to accept that they cannot reverse many of her policies, but that does not mean that Thatcherism has to be accepted as being or having been 'good' for the country. In fact many of the factors of social deprivation, social division and crime that the Conservatives bemoan are a direct result of Thatcherite policy. When I was in London I met a few people from the other extreme: in the constant belief that the British political system should be brought down by revolution. Maybe I am saying I am something like a Fabian of the early 20th century, seeking change but in a way which does not cause utter chaos. I know history too well to ignore the fact that revolutions badly handled lead to tyranny and a move right away from what the revolutionaries sought to achieve and usually play into the hands of the right-wing nationalists and conservatives rather than anything more democratic. So I am rather used to being a lonely voice, which is clearly why I have turned to blogging, which in the majority of cases is about lonely voices shouting electronically and to a large audience of people not paying much attention than if you did it in your local pub.
Anyway, what I was going to write about this morning was an essay by Andrew O'Hagan printed in Saturday's 'The Guardian'. It comes from his new book 'The Atlantic Ocean: Essays on Britain and America'. I must say that reading this essay I am not encouraged to buy the book. He has lots of good ideas but he needs to really work at editing them. I was bewildered by his jumping from his own reminiscences to references to his family to the state of the USA today to British society and back again. Maybe I am just not intelligent enough to follow it but my view was that essays should be very crisp and quickly comprehensible. Finally, I reach my point which is that this essay contains a series of statements which as a kind of mantra and agree with O'Hagan that they cut to the endemic problems of UK society. To quote, the UK has:
Sorry, I am rambling off. Back to the apology about newspaper-inspired blogging. The other thing for me is being of a liberal disposition, it is rare that I actually encounter people who are anywhere near in me political terms so they are very dismissive of any of my views. I remember in the early 1990s talking to man who said that everyone accepted that what Margaret Thatcher had done was necessary and good for the country and was incredulous that I did not accept that. Of course nowadays even the Labour Party seems to accept that they cannot reverse many of her policies, but that does not mean that Thatcherism has to be accepted as being or having been 'good' for the country. In fact many of the factors of social deprivation, social division and crime that the Conservatives bemoan are a direct result of Thatcherite policy. When I was in London I met a few people from the other extreme: in the constant belief that the British political system should be brought down by revolution. Maybe I am saying I am something like a Fabian of the early 20th century, seeking change but in a way which does not cause utter chaos. I know history too well to ignore the fact that revolutions badly handled lead to tyranny and a move right away from what the revolutionaries sought to achieve and usually play into the hands of the right-wing nationalists and conservatives rather than anything more democratic. So I am rather used to being a lonely voice, which is clearly why I have turned to blogging, which in the majority of cases is about lonely voices shouting electronically and to a large audience of people not paying much attention than if you did it in your local pub.
Anyway, what I was going to write about this morning was an essay by Andrew O'Hagan printed in Saturday's 'The Guardian'. It comes from his new book 'The Atlantic Ocean: Essays on Britain and America'. I must say that reading this essay I am not encouraged to buy the book. He has lots of good ideas but he needs to really work at editing them. I was bewildered by his jumping from his own reminiscences to references to his family to the state of the USA today to British society and back again. Maybe I am just not intelligent enough to follow it but my view was that essays should be very crisp and quickly comprehensible. Finally, I reach my point which is that this essay contains a series of statements which as a kind of mantra and agree with O'Hagan that they cut to the endemic problems of UK society. To quote, the UK has:
'Culture as social balm.
Spite as entertainment.
Shouting as argument.
Dysfunction as normality.
Desires as rights.
Shopping as democracy.
Fame is the local hunger in so much of this...'
Spite as entertainment.
Shouting as argument.
Dysfunction as normality.
Desires as rights.
Shopping as democracy.
Fame is the local hunger in so much of this...'
I would argue that dysfunction has always been normality and it fact forcing people to be 'normal' was what caused a lot of difficulty and personal distress in the past. What I in fact think is that dysfunction has not become argument, but like spite, is now entertainment. So many 'documentaries' are the television equivalent of freak shows of the touring fairs of the past. We have a parade of people who have disabilities or psychological issues and we are encouraged to comment. This is no different to paying to go to St. Mary of Bethlehem hospital on a Sunday in the 19th century to gaze at the insane people locked in cages. Steadily from 'fly-on-the-wall' documentaries, in the search for ever more enthralling images we have got back to the freak show culture. That is the 'culture' which acts as social balm. Culture has long seen to have socially adhesive qualities, but now it has come down to a level that every amateur is an entertainer and what they provide is Schadenfreude. Watching parades of people on the numerous talent shows who lack talent is like holding a treat up for a dog who is never going to reach it, but he keeps thinking if he tries he may do so, just this once. Back in the 1970s there was a series called 'New Faces' which was little different to talent shows today, but no-one on there was literally 'hopeless', i.e. with no chance of getting somewhere. Some were better than others, but you did not find those who should have had no hope of a career in entertainment. Modern British television has made it so that everyone has the chance to become a celebrity through the wide diversity of 'reality' shows, and this 'local hunger' drives people with false hope and so provides the fodder for the millions to revel in the humiliation of these people.
I think O'Hagan somewhat neglects this freak/humiliation show aspect, but he is right that 'spite is entertainment' in that so many quiz and game shows now include and element in which you have to trick or betray fellow contestants. It probably started with 'Fifteen to One' but that is pretty anondyne compared to the next big leap 'The Weakest Link' and follow ons like 'Golden Balls' and 'Shafted' (the names themselves smack of the glittering things put on offer, the need to betray and even a eugenic sense of who is the 'right' and 'wrong' people to be playing). It is forgotten that it is you versus the programme makers it becomes you versus everyone else. Even the 6-year old in my house opens boxes of eggs to see if one is broken as if it was part of the game show 'Deal or No Deal' in which contestants open various boxes to see if they have won large or small sums of money. If such dog-eat-dog culture is penetrating to primary school children then what does that offer for our future? This is a useful tool for those in power as it means we blame each other and see our rivals as people on the same level of us rather seeking to challenge those who rule us. It is gladiatorial fights for all, when in fact it is the Emperor that decides who dies.
Shouting as argument fits in very nicely with this. Much of what O'Hagan's views stem from are not really the television programmes I have mentioned so far but the ones such as Oprah Winfrey, Ricki Lake, Trisha, Jeremy Kyle, etc., that have grown over the past 15 years in which people, usually, poor working class people, come on and air their grievances in front of an audience. It is another form of gladiatorial fights, and often descends into violence. It is supposedly tempered by the fact that the programme producers offering counselling, but of course they could do that without parading people's problems in front of a baying crowd. These people shout. They believe they are in the right. Self-righteousness can be empowering but it also blinds people and can lead to aggression where none is needed. As I have mentioned before we are tutored in being angry by 'reality' programmes showing people receiving poor customer care at airports, etc. By becoming angry the staff can dismiss you without addressing the real issues. None of these programmes ask why the customers are being treated so poorly in the first place, because of course that would end the programme makers' access to this material. In a society in which we have so few rights, anger is the last refuge and potentially the only way of achieving things, but it an instant, violent anger not the kind which sustains campaigns, it is the type of anger that those in power want us to have, not the kind of patient anger that causes them trouble.
Anger also stems from the sense of desires being rights. You hear about schools and universities being sued because in the students' eyes the teachers have not delivered the education they feel they have a right to. As someone said to me recently, people see universities like a fast-food restaurant whereas in fact they should see them more like a gym, just joining does not guarantee a fit body, you have to go regularly and work at it. However, we all want to pay our fee and be guaranteed success. We feel we have the right to drive huge cars (though I am glad to see rising fuel costs has slashed the number of 4x4s being bought), be able to speed without fear of penalty, be able to shop 24 hours per day, park right outside the school, even not have Germans on our beach (one group of British holidaymakers have tried to sue the holiday company over too many Germans at their resort and German authorities are now advising Germans to stay away from British holidaymakers, what a state we are in!), be able to keep eating without becoming ill and so on and so on. Any concept of society as being a balance of duties and entitlement has gone. No-one has a sense of duty, they only do things for reward, yet they expect to be entitled to everything. Of course, with the focus entirely on consumption, as long as that is satiated, they do not expect anything more.
Shopping is democracy. I think that is a real phrase that sums up so much of what is wrong with UK society, though I talked to a woman from Dubai the other day who complained British shops should stay open until 10pm as they do in Dubai (which has even less democracy than the UK so clearly needs more shopping!). Interestingly French, Belgian and German shops have much shorter opening hours than British shops and the French have their elections on a Sunday, when the shops are shut. As long as we can consume, British people feel free. They pay a high price in debt and bankruptcy, but they are clearly happy to make such sacrifices for their treasured 'democratic' right. Of course shopping is not democracy, even the right to shop is not democracy, it is division and exclusion. It depends on money which we have in varying amounts. Each vote in a democracy should count equally, but in consumption it is the differences which in fact we are concerned about. We actually want people we see as not of our type excluded from the shops we frequent. Now with home grocery deliveries we do not even mix with the rest of the public, in fact we shout out our exclusivity by the expense of the supermarket we have delivering to our house. Of course, as long as we can feel we can access shopping then we do not start complaining for other things. This is the opiate of the 21st century UK person, it dulls them to the pain of a decaying society and their mounting debts. Whenever the phrase 'retail therapy' came into use then we should have recognised our society was in need of real therapy.
O'Hagan has produced an epigram of the ills of UK society. As he correctly identifies it stems in part from looking too much to the USA which in itself has actually forgotten many of the facets that made it a worthwhile country in the past and replaced them with anger to disguise division and give a false sense of worth. The UK receives a distilled version of this, made worse by the fact that Britain has always been far more hierarchical and bar for a few years there has never been an opportunity for anyone 'to get on' here. We live in a neo-feudal state so all of these issues of consumption and anger and violence are as damaging today as they would have been in the 13th century, when at least you had religious precepts, developing civic pride and an aspiration to some kind of 'chivalry' however false it might have been in reality, to temper the impact of such individualistic behaviour and the damage it wreaks on people. Those tempering aspects are gone and we now face the full force of the individual becoming all powerful.
I think O'Hagan somewhat neglects this freak/humiliation show aspect, but he is right that 'spite is entertainment' in that so many quiz and game shows now include and element in which you have to trick or betray fellow contestants. It probably started with 'Fifteen to One' but that is pretty anondyne compared to the next big leap 'The Weakest Link' and follow ons like 'Golden Balls' and 'Shafted' (the names themselves smack of the glittering things put on offer, the need to betray and even a eugenic sense of who is the 'right' and 'wrong' people to be playing). It is forgotten that it is you versus the programme makers it becomes you versus everyone else. Even the 6-year old in my house opens boxes of eggs to see if one is broken as if it was part of the game show 'Deal or No Deal' in which contestants open various boxes to see if they have won large or small sums of money. If such dog-eat-dog culture is penetrating to primary school children then what does that offer for our future? This is a useful tool for those in power as it means we blame each other and see our rivals as people on the same level of us rather seeking to challenge those who rule us. It is gladiatorial fights for all, when in fact it is the Emperor that decides who dies.
Shouting as argument fits in very nicely with this. Much of what O'Hagan's views stem from are not really the television programmes I have mentioned so far but the ones such as Oprah Winfrey, Ricki Lake, Trisha, Jeremy Kyle, etc., that have grown over the past 15 years in which people, usually, poor working class people, come on and air their grievances in front of an audience. It is another form of gladiatorial fights, and often descends into violence. It is supposedly tempered by the fact that the programme producers offering counselling, but of course they could do that without parading people's problems in front of a baying crowd. These people shout. They believe they are in the right. Self-righteousness can be empowering but it also blinds people and can lead to aggression where none is needed. As I have mentioned before we are tutored in being angry by 'reality' programmes showing people receiving poor customer care at airports, etc. By becoming angry the staff can dismiss you without addressing the real issues. None of these programmes ask why the customers are being treated so poorly in the first place, because of course that would end the programme makers' access to this material. In a society in which we have so few rights, anger is the last refuge and potentially the only way of achieving things, but it an instant, violent anger not the kind which sustains campaigns, it is the type of anger that those in power want us to have, not the kind of patient anger that causes them trouble.
Anger also stems from the sense of desires being rights. You hear about schools and universities being sued because in the students' eyes the teachers have not delivered the education they feel they have a right to. As someone said to me recently, people see universities like a fast-food restaurant whereas in fact they should see them more like a gym, just joining does not guarantee a fit body, you have to go regularly and work at it. However, we all want to pay our fee and be guaranteed success. We feel we have the right to drive huge cars (though I am glad to see rising fuel costs has slashed the number of 4x4s being bought), be able to speed without fear of penalty, be able to shop 24 hours per day, park right outside the school, even not have Germans on our beach (one group of British holidaymakers have tried to sue the holiday company over too many Germans at their resort and German authorities are now advising Germans to stay away from British holidaymakers, what a state we are in!), be able to keep eating without becoming ill and so on and so on. Any concept of society as being a balance of duties and entitlement has gone. No-one has a sense of duty, they only do things for reward, yet they expect to be entitled to everything. Of course, with the focus entirely on consumption, as long as that is satiated, they do not expect anything more.
Shopping is democracy. I think that is a real phrase that sums up so much of what is wrong with UK society, though I talked to a woman from Dubai the other day who complained British shops should stay open until 10pm as they do in Dubai (which has even less democracy than the UK so clearly needs more shopping!). Interestingly French, Belgian and German shops have much shorter opening hours than British shops and the French have their elections on a Sunday, when the shops are shut. As long as we can consume, British people feel free. They pay a high price in debt and bankruptcy, but they are clearly happy to make such sacrifices for their treasured 'democratic' right. Of course shopping is not democracy, even the right to shop is not democracy, it is division and exclusion. It depends on money which we have in varying amounts. Each vote in a democracy should count equally, but in consumption it is the differences which in fact we are concerned about. We actually want people we see as not of our type excluded from the shops we frequent. Now with home grocery deliveries we do not even mix with the rest of the public, in fact we shout out our exclusivity by the expense of the supermarket we have delivering to our house. Of course, as long as we can feel we can access shopping then we do not start complaining for other things. This is the opiate of the 21st century UK person, it dulls them to the pain of a decaying society and their mounting debts. Whenever the phrase 'retail therapy' came into use then we should have recognised our society was in need of real therapy.
O'Hagan has produced an epigram of the ills of UK society. As he correctly identifies it stems in part from looking too much to the USA which in itself has actually forgotten many of the facets that made it a worthwhile country in the past and replaced them with anger to disguise division and give a false sense of worth. The UK receives a distilled version of this, made worse by the fact that Britain has always been far more hierarchical and bar for a few years there has never been an opportunity for anyone 'to get on' here. We live in a neo-feudal state so all of these issues of consumption and anger and violence are as damaging today as they would have been in the 13th century, when at least you had religious precepts, developing civic pride and an aspiration to some kind of 'chivalry' however false it might have been in reality, to temper the impact of such individualistic behaviour and the damage it wreaks on people. Those tempering aspects are gone and we now face the full force of the individual becoming all powerful.
Friday, 4 May 2007
Anger - the new Opiate of the British People
We live in an angry age. In the 1960s they spoke of the 'angry young man' disillusioned by the established ways things were done. These days many of us are angry whether we are young or old, male of female. In the UK the word 'rage' seems appended to any activity, starting with 'road rage' and spreading to 'trolley rage', 'airport rage'. The popularity of 'fly on the wall' (as they used to be called) documentaries, especially about airports and traffic wardens, means that we can turn on the television to watch people get furious with others in all sorts of environments; it provides a master class for us in how to do it. It has also upped the stakes, to be taken seriously we feel we have to get angrier and more abusive than the examples we see on television and in the street everyday.
Why are people so angry? It seems something more prevalent in the UK than elsewhere, though now you can get fined on the spot £80 (€117; US$160) if the police catch you. In some ways I think it stems from men feeling useless in the modern world. British men do poorer at school and many are disinterested in learning. Despite changes in legislation, women still tend to be cheaper to employ in the UK and their abilities to 'multi-task' are contrasted with lumbering, inflexible men. If an employer has a choice, they pick the woman. Unemployment in the UK is 1.7 million (out of 65 million people), lower than say Germany (about 4 million out of a population of 80 million) or France (2.3 million out of a population slightly below the UK's) but enough to make many men feel on the scrapheap. Incomes are low for UK workers, 80% earn less than the national average of £23,000 per year and food, accommodation, fuel and cars are all more costly than in neighbouring countries, despite the UK being in the EU. Anger will not get you a job or put more money in your pocket, but for most British men, nothing can do that for you and at least getting angry feels good for a short while.
Ah, but you say, the women get as angry as the men. This is true. Women suffer from all the same cost issues and uncertainty over unemployment than men too, they also learn by the examples shown on television, but they tend less to see it as a first reaction in the way many men do. Both men and women feel powerless in our society. It is difficult to get so many things done in the UK. Customer service is appalling, especially when it comes to the utility companies for things like water, gas, electricity, telephones, etc. The development of broadband provision is now being held back by the greed of many of the providers. They force you into lengthy contracts that you are unable to break even if you have left the house you had the service provided to (I was still paying for telephone and cable television in a house I had left 3 months before because it takes NTL that long to end the service, by then they were also getting money from the people who had taken over the house), their service is appalling and the charges steep. When you contact them you are on the telephone for 45 minutes to 1 hour minimum and will be forced to telephone back on other occasions and keep on repeating details about your circumstances. I would like people in other countries to let me know if it is so bad there. Transport especially trains and aeroplanes are just as bad with impolite staff, confusing systems and minimal effort to keep people informed when things go wrong. Bashing your head against the brick wall of blank-faced or -voiced staff is infuriating. No wonder people get angry, because following the procedures the companies put in place generally fails.
As an aside, one trend many airlines are now introducing is that if you complain at an airport they call over security staff and say you are a terrorist threat. In 2006 a writer for 'The Guardian' newspaper who was pregnant at the time asked for some luggage trolleys to be moved to part of an airport where there were none. Instead of doing this airline company staff reported her to security as being disruptive and a risk to the airport. I personally faced a similar problem when some of my luggage was wrecked. I tried to make a complaint at the correct desk, it was dismissed as irrelevant, the staff summoned a security guard and a police office who advised me if I did not stop trying to make a complaint I would be fined £80 on the spot. If this is the treatment you get for a minor complaint is it not surprising that people jack up the tension further. If you are going to be treated as disruptive why not actually be so?
Another contributing factor in the UK is an increasing sense of dignity. Unlike cultures such as China, the UK has not really had a culture of 'keeping face', but it seems to be increasing. Drivers get offended if a smaller car overtakes them, people get angry if you try to get past them on the pavement, they get offended if they think you are looking at them (and even more so if you see their children) almost encouraging people to walk around with their eyes to the ground. When you have so little to live for, your personal space and your sense of dignity and in particular the authority that having a family appears to give you in present UK society, are things that people fight strongly to retain, even when the bulk of the slights against these things are imagined. Such attitudes are backed by a real sense of self-righteousness. The comedians Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse used to portray this attitude so well with their 'self-righteous brothers' characters, each week in a matter of minutes the brothers would be ranting about some imagined offence to them by a celebrity they had never met. It sums up so much behaviour in the UK today.
So, in an age when the ordinary person feels buffeted by people and organisations over which they have no comeback, anger is the temporary release that stops us sinking into utter despair about our powerless positions. Rather than sink into gloom, I prove at least that I am more justified than you in my argument and I can stamp and shout louder than you. I am a man living in the UK and I feel as frustrated as the next person. Over the past few years I have found I have become addicted to anger and indulge in it on an almost daily basis. Railing against the unfairness of the other drivers on the road, yet another bill from a utility company, my inability to get anything in my house repaired, all of this anger stops me abandoning all hope and simply slumping in a heap on the floor, stunned by the futility of most of my actions in today's Britain. Like all addictions it is doing me harm, raising my blood pressure and probably leading me to an early grave. However, in a country of anger-users there is no incentive to kick the habit, in fact I am challenged daily to be a better user of anger than anyone else. It was once said that religion was the opiate of the people, in 21st century Britain, anger is the people's crack.
Why are people so angry? It seems something more prevalent in the UK than elsewhere, though now you can get fined on the spot £80 (€117; US$160) if the police catch you. In some ways I think it stems from men feeling useless in the modern world. British men do poorer at school and many are disinterested in learning. Despite changes in legislation, women still tend to be cheaper to employ in the UK and their abilities to 'multi-task' are contrasted with lumbering, inflexible men. If an employer has a choice, they pick the woman. Unemployment in the UK is 1.7 million (out of 65 million people), lower than say Germany (about 4 million out of a population of 80 million) or France (2.3 million out of a population slightly below the UK's) but enough to make many men feel on the scrapheap. Incomes are low for UK workers, 80% earn less than the national average of £23,000 per year and food, accommodation, fuel and cars are all more costly than in neighbouring countries, despite the UK being in the EU. Anger will not get you a job or put more money in your pocket, but for most British men, nothing can do that for you and at least getting angry feels good for a short while.
Ah, but you say, the women get as angry as the men. This is true. Women suffer from all the same cost issues and uncertainty over unemployment than men too, they also learn by the examples shown on television, but they tend less to see it as a first reaction in the way many men do. Both men and women feel powerless in our society. It is difficult to get so many things done in the UK. Customer service is appalling, especially when it comes to the utility companies for things like water, gas, electricity, telephones, etc. The development of broadband provision is now being held back by the greed of many of the providers. They force you into lengthy contracts that you are unable to break even if you have left the house you had the service provided to (I was still paying for telephone and cable television in a house I had left 3 months before because it takes NTL that long to end the service, by then they were also getting money from the people who had taken over the house), their service is appalling and the charges steep. When you contact them you are on the telephone for 45 minutes to 1 hour minimum and will be forced to telephone back on other occasions and keep on repeating details about your circumstances. I would like people in other countries to let me know if it is so bad there. Transport especially trains and aeroplanes are just as bad with impolite staff, confusing systems and minimal effort to keep people informed when things go wrong. Bashing your head against the brick wall of blank-faced or -voiced staff is infuriating. No wonder people get angry, because following the procedures the companies put in place generally fails.
As an aside, one trend many airlines are now introducing is that if you complain at an airport they call over security staff and say you are a terrorist threat. In 2006 a writer for 'The Guardian' newspaper who was pregnant at the time asked for some luggage trolleys to be moved to part of an airport where there were none. Instead of doing this airline company staff reported her to security as being disruptive and a risk to the airport. I personally faced a similar problem when some of my luggage was wrecked. I tried to make a complaint at the correct desk, it was dismissed as irrelevant, the staff summoned a security guard and a police office who advised me if I did not stop trying to make a complaint I would be fined £80 on the spot. If this is the treatment you get for a minor complaint is it not surprising that people jack up the tension further. If you are going to be treated as disruptive why not actually be so?
Another contributing factor in the UK is an increasing sense of dignity. Unlike cultures such as China, the UK has not really had a culture of 'keeping face', but it seems to be increasing. Drivers get offended if a smaller car overtakes them, people get angry if you try to get past them on the pavement, they get offended if they think you are looking at them (and even more so if you see their children) almost encouraging people to walk around with their eyes to the ground. When you have so little to live for, your personal space and your sense of dignity and in particular the authority that having a family appears to give you in present UK society, are things that people fight strongly to retain, even when the bulk of the slights against these things are imagined. Such attitudes are backed by a real sense of self-righteousness. The comedians Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse used to portray this attitude so well with their 'self-righteous brothers' characters, each week in a matter of minutes the brothers would be ranting about some imagined offence to them by a celebrity they had never met. It sums up so much behaviour in the UK today.
So, in an age when the ordinary person feels buffeted by people and organisations over which they have no comeback, anger is the temporary release that stops us sinking into utter despair about our powerless positions. Rather than sink into gloom, I prove at least that I am more justified than you in my argument and I can stamp and shout louder than you. I am a man living in the UK and I feel as frustrated as the next person. Over the past few years I have found I have become addicted to anger and indulge in it on an almost daily basis. Railing against the unfairness of the other drivers on the road, yet another bill from a utility company, my inability to get anything in my house repaired, all of this anger stops me abandoning all hope and simply slumping in a heap on the floor, stunned by the futility of most of my actions in today's Britain. Like all addictions it is doing me harm, raising my blood pressure and probably leading me to an early grave. However, in a country of anger-users there is no incentive to kick the habit, in fact I am challenged daily to be a better user of anger than anyone else. It was once said that religion was the opiate of the people, in 21st century Britain, anger is the people's crack.
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