Thirds: Time, Senseless Things and Waiting in the Wings.

Hard times breed strong men and women. Strong men and women make good times. Good times begat weak men and women. So the narrative goes.

Today, we’ve gone from living in ‘good times’ to live in hard times, or at least interesting times – it seems the Western world is divided. Even Dear Old Blighty is in a state of dislocation and it might be said that weak men and women are part of the reason – either through their action or inaction. Government has of late too often pandered to rich elites in banking/finance, big media and multinational corporations while ignoring the concerns of those in society struggling to come to terms with or keep up with life in modern Britain; while government opposition has fallen into civil war, losing touch with the mood of the nation. The relatively affluent middle class, meanwhile, has become complacent and/or ineffective as a political movement against injustice. Cue Brexit. Cue Trump and the differing reactions to his election in the UK.

But what about class? Although class remains a thing in Britain today, as well as in the US - and the confusion and dissatisfaction around Brexit and the Presidential Elections we’ve seen in 2016 can be considered on class terms - class has also proved a reasonably shiftless, immovable ideology for centuries that is not perhaps most useful in providing a medium through which to discuss how the divisions clearly present in the UK, US and indeed beyond can be overcome. Overcoming and closing the gaps between the so called and/or self-styled ‘haves’ or ‘have nots’ has to be the order of the day.

Age has and is proving a major factor in explaining the tensions that exist in 2016 Britain and the US.
 

People are living longer – there are lots of elderly people. In the UK this not only puts added pressure on social services and the beleaguered NHS - already struggling in face of austerity measures, from the capitalist ideology of speed/efficiency over quality of care, as well as (arguably) immigration – but importantly creates a sizeable group in society that are simply not comfortable with modernity and the frantic pace of change both in the workplace and in the cultural/social sphere.

Technology and its sudden ubiquity has seen jobs requiring manual skills eroded, it has changed the way work is organised, in many instances undermining job security; for those out of work, technology has added yet another element of complexity to the chaotic benefits system (you have to know IT to negotiate the benefits system in the UK at any rate).

At the same time, technology has facilitated the spread of new ideas about race, sex and gender (among others), all with a particular vocabulary (or political correctness), ideas that have penetrated into nearly all walks of life regardless of how they are communicated. And then there are new ways of paying for things, and the increasingly depersonalized aspects of how we live out and administer our daily lives. What to believe and what not to? How does this work? Can anybody help?

Many people of the generation that grew up before the Second World War, during it or in the decade or two afterwards are struggling to come to terms with modernity. Government isn’t helping them. But these people make up a sizeable enough group in the UK/US today to be influenced and thus to be influential. The alt right succeed in reaching out to / exciting these people – cynically and clinically. The left has to learn. It has to start listening.

But the young are also struggling to keep up with modern Britain, so too in the US. Again technology, while in many ways a great accompaniment and sometime facilitator in the lives of young people, is also the source of consternation and confusion, not to mention the platform for bullying and related crises in self-confidence.  What is true? What isn’t? Who/what is real? Where is something I can trust/believe in?

Again, the influencers in society need to listen.

Brexit (and Trump's success) were cries of 'stop!', 'things have gone too far!', 'pay us attention!', pleas for some kind of order.

To me – generally speaking – one of the things people of all ages seem increasingly useless at is in understanding and best utilising their freedom: the nature and parameters of it in 2016 Britain/USA. It may be too far to claim that technology and its binary impositions/inability to account for 3/5ths of reality is a straightjacket on freedom and independence of thought, but it isn’t a stretch to say it engenders a muddying of the waters when it comes to information and to understanding what is reliable/relevant and what is not.

Social media which, it seems, in part accounted for the election of Donald Trump (see Brietbart News’ propaganda and the fact Steve Bannon will be in the White House from Jan 21), earlier in the year proved a strong influencer in the Brexit referendum. There is simply too much information on Twitter and Facebook for one person, young or old, to absorb, so people search out one or two news havens and largely accept what they are fed (the same goes for print media, including newspapers, it is true).

But it shouldn’t be too much to except for people to be able to understand the inherent bias in what they are reading, and to recognise they are being fed not feeding/nourishing themselves.

In his 1997 song ‘Law’, David Bowie intoned: ‘I don’t want knowledge, I want certainty.’  He was satirising intellectual culture (curiosity or lack of it). Nineteen years on it’s a lyric that belies an attitude that seems relevant to both Right and Left in the context of a fractious 2016. Most of us would prefer certainty, and on the eve of Brexit and the US presidential elections there was plenty of it around, when we should really have been/be thirsting for knowledge over and above straightforward (and with the internet – vitriolic and potentially never ending) confirmation of our views  - especially at the time of writing.

Of course, education is key here.

In a modern world driven ever onwards at increasing speeds by the advance of technology and all that it manifests from one week to another, perhaps (in the UK at least) we place too much emphasis on educating people to fulfil a very narrow remit in the early stages of their development and indeed in further/adult education (rigid curriculums, empirical testing, overly specific training for the very few employment opportunities available). Modernity wants order and simultaneously wishes to limit or put controls on freedom. Capitalism, in the context of globalisation, is where speed/efficiency rules, divides and subjugates. And if you can’t keep up as a pupil-in-class-then-school-leaver, a graduate, someone trying to change career, or as some poor soul trying to get back into the world of work, you are worthless and surplus since binary targets and money/profit rules.

Careerism does not go hand in hand with individualism.

This said, the UK (with the US) is also one of the world’s leading nations for start-up businesses. There is an entrepreneurial spirit around which presumably stems from a certain freedom/flexibility of thought and a desire to create something new and something better than that currently in existence/on the market (this aside from low corporation taxes!). Where does this entrepreneurial spirit arise and how is it fostered by education? This seems an important question to answer and to learn from. We all can benefit from entertaining better (with due consideration and discernment) a wide variety of ideas and options for improving the common good (as well as our own!).

But not everyone is predisposed to being this way, encouragement is needed.

For starters - and to make possible encouragement - the barriers to entry to becoming an educator/involved in education (overly long and sometimes expensive training) and the lack of incentives for staying in the profession need to be addressed with sufficient vision, courage and investment once and for all.

Educators are currently rushed off their feet, indeed, everyone is struggling or failing to keep up – governments, opposition, pollsters, commentators, young, old, straight, queer, left and right. Before the next general election, before Trump’s inauguration in mid-January, maybe we should be telling and teaching ourselves initially to slow down, log off/step away from the havoc of 2016, the forward march of modernity and the determinist idea that 2017 will be ‘dark’ and consider how/where the light can get in to our dim and cracked heads. There, almost invariably, is another way. I say: ‘be free’ – entertain other ways. Then come back to the air.