I remember the footballer Matthew Le Tissier very well. I should do. I was in the Kop the afternoon he lifted the ball over the head of Liverpool defender in the box, running on the smash the ball into the net. He was a very skilful footballer. And I agree with the sentiment he expresses in his tweet here. I affirm freedom over fear. So long as it is freedom and not foolhardiness, and so long as it is fear and not wise precaution. These are important ifs. At the same time, the constant closing down of society and social connection risks doing incalculable damage to the richness and wealth of human bonds and ties, something which cannot but harm human health and happiness. As I wrote in reply to Gethin Thomas, footballer with Bangor City, I was looking forward to going down to Maesdu Park, home of Llandudno FC, to buy a season ticket. I’d spoken on the phone about the deal being offered - £25 season ticket plus a free scarf. I was really excited, not least because it sounded like the manager on the other end of the phone to me. He asked my name, too. It’s a great club with a personal touch, making the fans feel like members one of all. I don’t follow the news much. So it took my brother to tell me that the new Covid rules had put sport at all levels behind closed doors. Lord help us, he was right too!
Yet again, for the umpteenth time these past couple of years, my attempts to reach out and engage with people and the world, have been dashed. This is a desperately serious situation for me. I need that connection, I need that participation in the world, and above all I need faith in the future. The context is this: five years ago (December 21st 2016) I suffered a near fatal heart attack that left me with a chronic condition. I need to exercise and I need to watch my diet. And I need to enjoy life and people and look forward to the future. When spirits fall there is a tendency to stop doing the things that are good for mental and physical health. As you lose hope, you start to rely on things that are not good for you, you start to take short-cuts to happiness, and you start to indulge some tempting but, in the long run, treacherous pleasures. Little treats once in a while, even once a week, are fine. The dangers come when exceptions are turned into norms. The stress and pressure of events can tend to drag you down into a pit of despair. Two years ago my dad died (December 15 2019). He had had a chronic lung condition and more for twenty years or so and I had been keeping an eye on him back home. So I entered 2020 looking to reach out to the world in search of a new life, and new relations to others. I made a decent start and signed up for various things. I learned a lot on the anxiety classes I attended. I already knew that my health issues were not first and foremost physical – I have always been fit, exercised, never smoked, drink moderately, never obese, walk everywhere – but the result of psycho-social stress. My hunch was confirmed by the diagnosis of ASC in September 2021. So here I am, desperate to change behaviours and relations to others and the world, keen to extend my health and fitness regime into social living. And then Covid hit and closed normal social connection down. The sites of human exchange, solidarity, and enjoyment have been removed from me just at the time I needed them most. That has left me closing in on myself, at precisely the time I needed to be expanding being outwards to the world. This is truly desperate. I absolutely don’t deny the threat of Covid. I knew the threat it posed to people like me – with two chronic health conditions – from the first.
And I heard the words ‘underlying conditions’ which accompanied the reading of the daily death toll. So I took care and took evasive action. At the same time, although I was in the ‘at risk’ category, I carried on working door-to-door in the local community. I was proud to receive notification that I was classed as an ‘essential key worker.’ I was told ‘as an employee of your local newspaper you are providing a valuable service to the local community, particularly to the elderly, disabled, and vulnerable that cannot go outside and often rely on the newspaper being delivered to keep up to date with the outside as well as small businesses for advertising purposes. This is a time when this service is needed more than ever. We would like to thank you for your continued support and the great work you do in our local communities during this difficult time.’ (Ian Pitkin, Group Distribution Manager, Newsquest Media Group). In another communication I was told that ‘the jobs we do will be considered essential (as delivery people) and delivering papers is an important part of providing a vital service to the very people in society, over 70s for example, that will need their paper to keep them updated with the latest news.’ I was told that if I didn’t wish to continue delivering, preferring to self-isolate (advised for people with health conditions like mine), then I would be able to go on leave. I made the decision to carry on working. I enjoy my job, I enjoy going out and meeting people in the local community; people appreciated seeing me and I loved keeping in touch.
In the official letter from Newsquest (March 25th 2020) I was identified as ‘Essential Newsquest Media Staff,’ an ‘essential work, as defined by government,’ ‘one of a limited number of essential staff members required to attend work in order to help us fulfil our obligation to report and produce news for our print and digital productions.’ I was deemed to be playing a ‘essential role’ in performing ‘a key public service,’ and hence given the ‘status of key worker.’ (Henry Faure Walker, CEO Newsquest Media Group). I received another official letter of notification at the announcement of a second Lockdown in the new year (January 5th 2021). I really should have these letters framed and mounted. I know all the issues of pay and exploitation. I could make an issue of the fact that, come August 2021, I was made redundant, despite being so ‘key’ and ‘essential’ and of service to society. But the fact is that I was very proud of being recognised as being essential, for once in my life, and beyond the official letters I loved the recognition from the members of the great public in my local community, people who knew me and were glad to have a familiar and friendly face to see in a time of crisis. For once in my life I was someone who brought some sense of normal order to the world. People would leave messages of thanks and praise on their doors; they would come to the window and wave. In time, they gained the confidence to come to the door and exchange pleasantries at a distance. I received shouts of encouragement from across the street. ‘Keep going!’ one man shouted. ‘I’ll do my very best,’ I replied. It’s better than the alternative. ‘You are doing a grand job,’ another said. I got the impression that a lot of people were normally reserved, saying few words, so it was an effort for them to find words of encouragement. However simple and obvious – people tending to say the same thing – they were very well-intended, offered and received with a warm and generous heart. I miss my little job and I miss my people. As I reach out to the world again, I am being met with a constant closing down. This is not healthy. This is not healthy for mind and body, it is not healthy socially. It is not healthy for society or for public life or for business or for anything. I understand the reasons. I sure as Hell don’t want Covid. My brother had it and kept on warning me on getting vaccinated and protecting myself. I took the heavy hint – this is something I would struggle with. You have to understand that the massive heart attack I suffered left me with one-third of the heart dead. I was told my condition was such that it would be ‘too risky’ to operate. Hence I am walking a very fine tightrope health wise. I need to ensure that I get things right when it comes to exercise, diet, and lifestyle. I need hope and social connection. I understand the reasons for caution. The addiction to fear and shutdown, however, is one I am leery of. The fact is, social isolation, disconnection, and excommunication is the ruination of hope for me and just as lethal as any virus.
It’s five years since I was rushed off to hospital in an ambulance suffering from a massive heart attack. It was probably around 3pm, although it seemed much later having been a very a long day (a very long couple of days in fact). It was most exciting, especially since we seemed to hit every bump in the road as the sirens blared above. Despite agonising pain for at least two days, I hadn’t quite realized how precarious my existence was at that point. I still didn’t quite realize, joking with the paramedics and thinking how great this will look on Facebook. I spent Christmas 2016 in intensive care.
You can read all about it here. And a lot more besides. (If you have a decade to spare. The ‘carols by candlelight’ I was going to attend got cancelled, and so did a couple of other carol concerts I was looking forward too. So I took to writing again. That may not be healthy, seeing as I need to be active, exercise, seeing others).
The Welsh motto on the cap I’m wearing in the photo that comes with this article reads:
Araf deg mae mynd ymhell
Benthyg dros amser byr yw popeth
A geir yn y byd hwn.
Which translates as:
‘Go slowly and go far,
Everything you have in this world is just borrowed for a short time.’
It’s two different Welsh mottos which I put together. I am told that it makes no sense at all, but I’m not remotely sure about that; it makes perfect sense to me. Taking one’s time in order to go far is precisely what living under the aspect of eternity is about. I wanted to capture the sense of transcendence that has been lost in a modern age that is all action and no contemplation, rush at speed to get precisely nowhere, accumulating possessions and clinging on to them, little realising that what is truly precious and enduring evades such a grasping approach to life. Rebecca Stevens writes of ‘the sad sight of human life untouched by transcendence.’
It is as if
We had come to an end of the imagination,
Inanimate in an inert savoir.
Wallace Stevens
Very many of the people I have as ‘friends’ on social media subscribe to some form of naturalism or another. I see how regularly this leads them to dead-ends, philosophical conundrums that can’t be resolved, and an inhumanism. I can’t tell them directly and so have to keep hinting politely, but that naturalism is a delusion: nature is indifferent and doesn’t care one jot about your worries, hopes, dreams, and desires. That’s just one of many reasons I find it impossible to reach out for hope and connection on social media. The place is treacherous for me. I need to keep relations to others tight. To contact the few who are good company I have to suffer the neuroses of the many. This is a psychological weight that bears down hard on me and is something which, without question, has been instrumental in causing my health problems. I need to protect myself against the disturbances electronic connection introduces into my life, most of all by seeking and finding real connection in the real world with real people. But there it is. As I have sought to reach out to the world, the world has been put in cold storage. That leaves only a cruel isolation that is hard to bear.
It probably says something that rather than listening to what my body was telling me very loudly and very clearly in the days leading up to admission in hospital December 2016, I was busy writing a perfect description of the heart attack I was suffering in messages I exchanged on FB. I speculated that I had a frozen shoulder. When I finally had the sense to seek advice from someone who knew better – I think they call them doctors – I learned otherwise. But it took me ages to get to where I needed to be. I spent an eternity pondering whether to take action, and even when I did I didn’t undertake the right action. Rather than call an ambulance I called my medical centre. It’s a busy time of year, just before the Christmas break, and I tend to downplay problems. Luckily the receptionist twigged that this could be serious and suggested I come down and see if a doctor had a few minutes between appointments. I went to my medical centre by taxi to see if a doctor was available. Luckily one was. I told her that I thought it was a frozen shoulder; she wasn’t remotely convinced. She was on the spot and did her job, and that’s the reason I’m here now. Even then, my demeanour was such that, for the first couple of minutes, she pondered sending me to A&E. She said she ‘wouldn’t be comfortable’ doing that, so went further. Her manner quickly changed when she realized how serious the situation was. When the ambulance came she said told the paramedics that she ‘couldn’t believe’ how calm I had been, using the phrase ‘grace under pressure.’ I have since come to learn that people with ASC can be rather remiss when it comes to pain and suffering. Stress? Imagine dealing with issues of life and death with very different, and often difficult, people on a daily basis. My judgement tends to be a bit off here. I notice that my old medical centre tends to only attract public comments on the odd occasion when things go wrong, so I make a point of sending a card by way of thanks every year. I thank the receptionists and the particular doctor and all the people who are ‘just doing their job,’ thereby ensuring that people like me are still here and still enjoying life as best they can.
I copied the messages I exchanged on FB into the post I put on my Being and Place site. They are perfect descriptions of a heart attack in the process of being suffered. If it wasn’t so serious it would be hilarious. I mean, just how many warnings does a person need? The doctor who saw me in A&E asked, with a pained expression on his face, as to why I hadn’t rung much sooner (like when intense pain strikes and persists). I must have a very high threshold for pain, he said. Either that, or I prefer to tough things out rather than use telephones and talk to strange people.
It turned out to be a very interesting Christmas in hospital. The ward sister was concerned at my lack of visitors. I told her that this year was so ‘much better than last year,’ when I spent Christmas Day all alone. I had spent a couple of months in California and had been busy climbing up and falling down mountains, visiting Las Vegas and The Elvis Exhibition and a million other things. I returned home a week before Christmas and presumed that members of the family couldn’t wait to hear my tales. I had been invited with my dad to an aunty and uncle’s, so I was getting all my best stories ready for a long telling. Maybe they saw a long day coming. Around 9pm Christmas Eve my dad received a phone call telling me I was out, since there were ‘not enough chairs.’ I know. I’d dance on the table if need be. It wouldn’t be the first time (that’s probably why I never get invited). So Christmas on my own in hospital was better. And I wasn’t quite alone. I got my own priest saying a mass (when I told a friend on the phone she thought I had been receiving holy unction, the last rites). I also got a brass band just outside my room, and a nice young woman taking presents round for those all alone at Christmas. I got a nicely wrapped present from Santa Claus and a nice smile. Soap and deodorant. It’s the thought that counts. I wondered if this explained why I am usually alone at Christmas. But it was a most useful present. I was most moved. Like socks, you always need soap and deodorant, at least once in a while.
On Boxing Day my brother rang me and put my niece Rosa on the phone. She asked me if I’d had a ‘nice Christmas.’ I said I’d had a wonderful Christmas. The ward sister smiled at my attempts to suppress bursting out into laughter at the very idea. I’d survived, which was reason enough for smiles all round. I’d seen far more people than usual. Come to think of it, this Christmas will be the fifth time in seven now I’ve spent Christmas alone. It’s extraneous events and circumstances rather than a decline in my popularity, though (I think.) I must remember to make more use of that soap and deodorant. I have a habit of using deodorant as a perfume. As for soap, I was never too keen on the way it feels.
I tend to have eventful Decembers. I submitted my PhD in December, too (Dec 16th 2000), after years of slogging away on’rational freedom.’ My Director of Studies told me that he didn’t know anyone who was doing the work I was doing, certainly not in terms of the approach I was taking. Twenty years on, I still don’t see anything out there to touch it. I still see people going round and round in circles only to run into the same dead-ends. To think the publishers insisted that I cut the Plato and Aristotle and add something on the postmodernist twaddle I was arguing against, because ‘that’s what students want.’ I told them to sod off. And they did. I have a way with words. I’ve never been remotely interested in making a name or a living by playing a game I know to be wrong and rotten. I give what is needed, not what is wanted. That approach allows me to take an independent line, free from misplaced loyalties and ambitions. It leaves me without a group in a world of groups.
I’ll take the opportunity to post a link to my fantastic health and fitness regime while I’m here talking about the health and wealth of social connection.
It’s only a ten minute read and is packed with details on lots of healthy foods and easy-to-do exercise. It’s all just little steps, all of which are within reach (if you are fairly fit to begin with). I need to add some graphics to explain the dumbbell exercises, although I am sure you can find them by looking the titles up on the Internet. Adding some context here might go some way to indicating just how great my comeback from the pit of December 2016 has been. The nurses in cardia rehab in the early months of 2017 would keep taking my pulse in the gym and then, with worried expressions on their faces, would take the meagre 2kg dumbbells off me. This was incredibly worrying seeing as they allowed some pretty elderly folk to carry on unaccosted (if that’s a word). I got the impression that I was walking a tightrope. It is also possible that I was getting a little carried away in my enthusiasm and needed calming down. But it was noted that my pulse rate tended to run high. In fact, it was described as ‘pathological.’ In a one-to-one, one of the nurses expressed surprise, seeing I was talking so calmly with her. If you want my view, I think it is down to the stress of new situations and new people, something that is a characteristic of people with ASC. I swear, however it may have seemed, it is nothing to do with ladies in uniforms. Joking aside, I came from a fairly parlous and precarious physical state in 2017 to the position I’m in now: I’ve climbed up mountain sides at altitudes, hiked headlands for days on end, swam in the Mediterranean (despite having only a Learners’ Swimming Certificate from 1976, and that only earned after several attempts), and riding bikes. Actually that last bit is a lie, since I can’t ride a bike for toffee and fall off them on the odd occasion I get on them without fail. But I do have an exercise bike and I hit 14/15km in 30 mins on it regularly. And I’ve never fallen off it to this day. So I’m patting myself on the back. As I remember, though, I did struggle to mount the one in cardiac rehab. We would have just a minute on each exercise in the circuit. It would take me thirty seconds to get my feet in the straps, no sooner starting before I had to get off and do something else. I’ve gone from one minute in rehab to thirty minutes at 30kmph back home. That’s not bad at all. My physio was most impressed when I told him in 2018.
I would always advise people to consult with someone who actually knows what they are doing before embarking on an exercise and diet programme. It all depends on who you are and what you are capable of. I’m a no frills, all thrills person. With me, you just have to hold on and enjoy the bumpy ride, if you’ve got the talent and inclination for it. So I may not be an entirely reliable guide on these things. I’ve never been unfit. I walk carrying pretty heavy weights for a living, and did that for over ten years. I also used to do 500 press-ups a day. So I can tackle a bit more than most people who have health issues. We were given yoga and Tai Chi in our classes, but with my trademark genius for evasion I managed to absent myself those weeks. I’m not remotely good at following instructions; I tend to get confused and make things worse. My uncle could tell you the funny story of how I got tangled up in wires in the hospital, setting the alarms ringing. Instead of getting untangled, I kept going in the wrong direction, getting more and more tangled up as a result. The nurse said nothing but simply planted her hand firmly on my head and promptly started to turn me the right way round. I am unorthodox by nature. So it’s best for me to keep it simple; I can add complications as easily as breathing.
So there’s nothing remotely fancy in my design for health and happiness, no foods with names you can’t spell or pronounce and no complicated exercises with impossible to understand instructions: it’s all within the reach of those who like to keep it simple. That said, it is solidly based on good advice and good practice. I have a full document on the actual health properties and benefits of the various foodstuffs. I listened to the nurses, dieticians, and physios in cardiac rehab and took notes, and with that information devised a plan that even I could understand. It works. It had me racing up mountain sides in California in 2019. It took me 43 minutes to get to the last bend to The Notch, Mt Baldy, which impressed all those who know the area. In my first visits to the place, this would normally take an hour and more. I think I have some idea of what I’m doing.
So getting things right in terms of right food and exercise is important. You should also find something that you enjoy and do it regularly. Get your relations to yourself, others, and life right. Enjoy what you enjoy and enjoy it a lot.
Here’s something I wrote the evening after we’d had an interesting day in cardiac rehab back in 2017, based on the discussion about being given a second chance at life. Or third or fourth in the cases of some.
‘Being who you are is the privilege of a lifetime.’
And here are other writings based on little inspirational talks I gave:
This brings me to another issue – stress. There is good stress, the stress that comes in response to events that kickstart the mind and body into taking appropriate action – like getting out of the way of the lion that jumps out at you from a bush; and there is bad stress, the stress that doesn’t go away, that keeps your body in a high state of alert, and which in time develops into chronic anxiety. I have learned that in dealing with an only recently diagnosed condition of AS that this is the source of my physical troubles. And it’s a hard nut to crack. Whilst I got myself into peak condition in mid-2019, being just six-to-eight pounds heavier than I was in my mid-twenties, things started to slide health-wise under pressure of events. My world had already been turned upside down by the death of my father and the need to prepare to move house, when Covid struck. Social isolation is an absolute blight, severing contact with others and removing you from external sites of joy. It narrows your horizons and your scope for action; it diminishes hope. As a result, you can start to indulge in some unhealthy comforts, with exceptional treats quickly becoming the norm by sheer force of habit. I’ve always loved a phrase coined by Alexis de Tocqueville, ‘habits of the heart,’ referring to those internal practices of individuals that sustain society, social connection, and solidarity. It’s important to note, however, that there are good habits and bad habits. Practice only makes perfect if you are doing the right thing in the first place. I was glad to have kept in touch with people doing my little job in the local community. I was proud to be considered an ‘essential worker’ for once. I saw people under stress through being separated from one another and from normal life, and I saw their mental and physical health suffering in consequence. That stress leaves you resorting to some dubious comforts, losing hope, knocking off the exercise, eating too much of the wrong things and too little of the right things. I know from my own experience that isolation and a feeling of being mired in a pervasive and constant crisis encourages lurches back (and urges forward) into bad habits. I have a sweet tooth and write far too much. You need to be active and ‘keep those feet moving!’ (rehab motto). Exercise is an important habit to acquire and keep up. Regular exercise boosts positivity by releasing endorphins – do it! You need to keep returning to the source of positivity. If you don’t do the right things, or are simply severed from them, it leaves you reliant on the electronic world for connection. And Heaven help you, for these are external sites of human misery. In grief and isolation I looked to social media to prove its worth in 2020. Good grief. An eternity in Dante’s Inferno would be a picnic by comparison. Time and again whenever I found something to enjoy, celebrate, and share – Andrea Bocelli’s Music For Hope: From the Duomo di Milano or Liverpool’s Premier league title win – in no time at all I had people determined to rain on my parade. The place is filled with neurotics who identify every sign of joy about to explode and move in on it quickly to destroy it. It’s a universal acid. The least said about the rancour and division in politics the better. The place is full of people grinding the axes into the heads of others. Anti-social media has all the characteristics of a sphere of universal antagonism to me, less a genuine public sphere based on dialogue than an electronic Id of private prejudices and pretensions; it is a remote, impersonal sphere where people are encouraged to say things that they never would in personal relation. I get the distinct impression that most on there live comfortably, in close connection with families and friends, and simply vent their spleen, frankly vomit, into an empty, anonymous cess-pit. If you are really isolated and come to this place looking for warmth and connection, you are going to be badly disappointed. It is no wonder that many people keep their pages tightly controlled, visible only to people they know in the flesh. Anti-social media is the realisation of Hobbes’ ‘war of all against all.’
‘Out of life’s school of war — What does not kill me makes me stronger.’
Friedrich Nietzsche, part of aphorism number 8 from the "Maxims and Arrows" section of ‘Twilight of the Idols,’ 1888
I’ve been almost killed off a few times now, so I must be unassailable (or have a couple of those nine lives left). My talents for survival still just about exceed my infinite capacities for getting myself into trouble. Falling head-over-heels down a mountain side into the rocky San Antonio creek in California was probably my best attempt at an early demise yet. It’s all inadvertent, I would hasten to add. I was attempting to climb to the top of this side, which was a pretty stupid thing to be doing seeing as I was suffering from a frozen shoulder, having to do daily exercises to keep loose. I stopped, announced that "I'm not having this!”, turned round and headed downwards as if the law of gravity had ceased to exist. I soon started to slide. As I continued to slide at increasing speed, I decided to try and stand up. That was another mistake. Instead of digging into the ground, with feet and hands, I took to my heels. I found that instead of stopping I kept on moving, only now on foot. I was doing well for a while, running down the slope like a mountain goat in fact. And then I realized that I was running faster and faster. When I reached the point when I couldn’t stop accelerating, the thought occurred to me that I might well be in a little trouble. In the end, all you can do is take to the air and fly, and tuck your head in with perfect timing in anticipation of the crash landing to come (that’s about the only thing I learned to do right on the rugby field). I hit the rocks with full force. I’ll praise good technique on my part, but must admit most of my survival must have been down to luck. If you flow in the right position you tend to bounce. It is when you meet with solid obstacles coming in the opposite direction that you tend to break something; I was lucky that the rocks I hit seemed all to go in the direction I was going, which was into the San Antonio creek. The creek was empty of water but full of more rocks. I lay still for a few minutes in case something dropped off. I got away with internal bruising, walked a few miles through a forest to get to the road, climbed more rocks, saw deer in a clearing, kept an eye out for the bears in the area, got a lift from the good pastor’s wife, saw a mountain lion cub, won a darts match at a pub later that night, and had a couple of pints of Guinness. That was a very good day indeed. I’m at my best and most dangerous having been killed off.
I’m not impressed with the ‘school of war’ theory of life, though. The very opposite. I have no time at all for the ‘constant battles’ theory of life. And I’m out of endless wars and unwinnable games fought between irreducible gods/goods/truths. Whether you want to fight them out in social or electronic form, they go nowhere, waste your time, and make you miserable.
I’ve just seen this great tweet from Oliver Burkeman:
“Feeling anxious? Why not sit around for hours consuming news in an era when virtually all news organisations are financially incentivised to spotlight the most anxiety-inducing stories and forecasts of how bad things are going to get.”
Sadly, that’s how I experience social media, with rare exceptions excepted. Again, though, I was warned before going onto FB to keep my settings private among the people I know. Since such people were few, and I saw them in the flesh, and since I was promoting my e-tutoring business and advancing Green politics, I went public. Heavens, the grief that that decision has caused me, from people who met my every post with demands that its’ ‘time to act!’ to those who just volunteered downright abuse. But at least they acknowledged my existence. Most are indifferent to anything that doesn’t fit the prejudices, resentments, and lamentations they recycle daily. Whether news and media can be put on any another footing and remain public can be doubted. I just note the tendency for things posted to You Tube to come with ‘comments closed.’ Others have noticed the things I have noticed – the tendency of people to poison relations to others, dissolving public space into a war of private resentments and hatreds. There’s problems enough in the world. Being a proud historian by training, I can tell you that there has always been problems in history. Such is life. These problems have been met by practical men and women doing whatever it took to resolve them. Endlessly and neurotically pouring over what’s wrong and what can’t be done is not the way to resolve issues. If the problems we face are great, then so too are the tools we have to deal with them. Should people develop the wit and the will to look and join in common cause.
I don’t care for the daily crisis and controversy. I don’t need to have my consciousness ‘raised,’ I need it to focus appropriately to the task in hand. It’s like having not one but a whole pack of lions constantly jumping out at you from all directions. I have no filters. If I’m exposed to a lot of information then I very quickly generate a lot more information in response. That’s exhausting even in a controlled situation where I keep the focus and connections with people tight. I have a fairly pugilistic nature, too: if I see rubbish then I want to challenge it, especially when it contradicts views I’ve worked hard to develop over the years. I don’t mind contrary views, not least because I am frequently out on a limb in my own views; but I do mind shallow views. I have contempt for those who are so shallow as to follow any fashionable theory that is being circulated in the media – radical chic – as if diagnosis and prognosis can be obtained so cheaply. I see this daily on social media, making the place unvisitable and uninhabitable for me. I can only venture in wearing an oxygen mask.
That preparedness on my part to check views that I consider wrong works fine in personal relations, where you can check people face-to-face without the issue becoming personal – good civic relations and friendship can withstand heated exchanges for the reason that other interests and experiences are shared in common. In the conditions of distance and anonymity characterising electronic media, however, this character trait leaves you forever wanting to take issue with people, and them with you, each objectifying the other in a mutual antagonism and hatred. It is utterly horrid. We need to reconstitute proper public space, one that makes dialogue not merely a condition of civic freedom but a dimension of it. Endless contention is not wise, not healthy, and not needed. It does no good. Since I seem to lack the wisdom to walk away from fights – years of being told you are an idiot at school leaves you wanting forever to hit back at people you know to be wrong - I am better just putting them out of sight. I can’t live in a sphere of universal antagonism. Not only does it disturb my peace, it really is potentially lethal for me. Beyond that, the negativity and neurosis of worse-case scenario thinking and negative perceptions bias one encounters on social media is the cemetery of human hopes. Hope and confidence are key to surviving and thriving, both for persons and for societies. I have lived in crisis too long and witnessed death and disaster too often. I loathe the constant catastrophising of issues on social media. I don’t like being told to panic, least of all by people who are comfortably off, and am totally unimpressed by the use of fear and threat to ‘raise consciousness’ and mobilize people: it is a substitute for a genuine politics and ethics based on real connection to real people. If you can’t move people from within by inner connection, then you are lacking something or doing something wrong. ‘We have to cure ourselves of the itch for absolute knowledge and power. We have to close the distance between the push-button order and the human act. We have to touch people.’ (Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man, 2011: 184-185). It’s a message that I have taken to social media for years now, only to be consistently ignored.
Even if death is almost certain, in no wise ever does panic improve your chances of survival. Not ever. As soon as you hear anyone say ‘I want you to panic’ you know that you are in the presence of manipulators with an agenda to advance. Such people are a blight to any cause they latch onto. They may win short range victories – ‘getting people talking’ – but their advances have only shallow roots and will be blown away once people realize they are being had. I’ll tell a little personal story here (since I doubt many will have managed to read this far). Not only was I in the Hillsborough football stadium disaster of 1989, witnessing the crush which led to the deaths of 97 Liverpool football fans, I was among those who initiated the recovery as the emergency services failed all around. I was involved in pulling the advertisement hoardings off the wall, bare-handed, to transport the injured and dying to the other end of the stadium to receive medical attention. We went as quickly as we could, but not quick enough to deal with the death and injury all around. At one point one man came right to my side and screamed in my ear to go quicker since ‘people are dying down there!!’ For years I felt guilty that in some way we had been inadequate in our efforts. But the truth is that this was just panic on the part of the man screaming; feeling helpless, he was breaking down in a crisis. The very last thing you do in a crisis is encourage people to panic and breakdown, and shame on all who take this approach to ‘consciousness raising.’ They are instilling fear and feelings of helplessness and powerlessness; such things are the breeding ground of totalitarian imposition and control. Is that the real motive behind the approach? Or are people just badly misguided? Either way, the result is the same. You go as quickly as you can and no quicker. Attempt to go quicker and you will succeed only in short-circuiting the entire process. ‘More speed, less haste,’ my dad would tell me on the building site. And don’t take a ‘lazy man’s load,’ either, because you will drop everything you are carrying.
I am extremely leery of crisis, fear, and necessity in politics, as I am in personal life, not least because it generates a rationale that is easily appropriated by less than benign forces. I make these points in light of a Tweet from December 7th 2021, in which Nicholas Colloff argues:
“Green/left need better storytelling of what a green future might positively look like because it does too often emerge as anxiety-inducing, ‘miserabilist,’ and more expensive (to quote a friend last week who runs an environmental think tank in Europe).”
I couldn’t agree more and have been saying precisely that for so long now that I could cry at the lost years, lost connections to others, and lost opportunities for enjoyment. You only get the one life. I feel like all those years have been wasted on people with a congenital incapacity to listen and learn. You will find that people don’t listen for the very reason they already think they know it all; that’s why they never learn, never change their behaviour.
As for social media, I do next to nothing on there now with respect to politics and philosophy, and keep refusing to be drawn into engagement. I don’t like it, it’s not healthy, and it doesn’t lead anywhere. People need to understand that constant low level activity doesn’t sum to the one great breakthrough they may be seeking – merely to a lot of low level activity, exacting a toll on mental, physical, and social health to zero practical positive effect. I see social media as a barometer of social and political impotence, a mass expression of desire without practical creative effect.
I’ve much reduced the time I spend on social media for this reason, constantly having to remind myself not to comment when drawn, which is often. I get tagged and mentioned a lot, but have to keep telling myself not to look. If I comment, if I see some view that is just so wrong-headed, an affront to all I hold dear, then I try not to engage further. I turn off notifications. I have learned that in the main, people only negate and abuse. They can call me what the Hell they like, I care nothing for the opinions of such people. As for the accusation of ‘white male privilege,’ the only privileged people here are those who use the accusation to silence those with whom they disagree. I accept none of these terms. But there’s every reason for me to stay clear. Not only are these ‘debates’ endless on account of being fought between irreducible values, people don’t realize that I don’t have any brakes or filters. Instead of one line, I will write a dozen lines or more. Ask me for a thousand words and I will write ten thousand. I remember everything I have read and see all the connections between things in the world. My first academic referee described me as a ‘range rider.’ Another described me as a ‘hybrid.’ I move between and across disciplines with ease. That’s quite an impressive ability, except that it comes with dangers of verbal and intellectual sprawl, with me being stretched in all directions at once. Come in at any point and I will quickly expand a simple idea into something vast. And I need to control it. (He say, knowing fine well he’s writing endlessly here and now). The brain is high maintenance, small in body size but using up a mass of energy. Overthink and you soon exhaust the body.
But if I may be allowed to add a low-level view of my own – one that I have repeated umpteen times – better storytelling as to what future society might look like is required to inspire, motivate, and also obligate individuals. You can have all the scientific facts and figures in the world, but if you lack the human factor then you are just a machine with no motive power. There is little point scoring an ‘A’ on the sciences only to flunk on the humanities. A manipulative behaviourism is what you get when people with a natural science background try to do politics, ethics, and humanities: crude and cluless. I see FB friends sharing the Creation story in Genesis when told in scientific form, thinking that this is storytelling. Clever people are so clueless that it can make you cry. They don’t realize that all they have done is reinforce the split between the two concepts of God in the Hebrew Bible, Elohim and Hashem, focusing on the God of the physical universe to the neglect of the God of love and personal relationships. They have lost the human touch yet again. Storytelling means doing more than repackaging the facts and figures you love in popular form. ‘Here, let dead Poetry rise again from Hell’s dead realm.’ (Dante, Commedia, Purg 1: 7-8). Dante was a storyteller without peer. As Dorothy Sayers wrote:
‘Neither the world, nor the theologians, nor even Charles Williams had told me the one great, obvious, glaring fact about Dante Alighieri of Florence — that he was simply the most incomparable storyteller who ever set pen to paper.’
Sayers, Further Papers on Dante (New York, 1957), p. 2).
Tolkien, too, is a superb storyteller. I wrote this little book (of 374 pages) on Tolkien in three weeks. I have witnesses. I’m rather proud of it and it has consistently generated great feedback.
But if you want a shorter read (just nineteen minutes), try ‘Tolkien and the Ethics of Enchantment.’
That’s if you really want to understand storytelling, as opposed to just recycling the facts and figures that excite you and few others.
When I first came on FB in 2013, I was immediately harangued by people telling me it was ‘time to act!’ Day after day! This was too much. The repetition of that same phrase, day after day, struck me as something rooted in a lack or deficiency. Modernity does nothing but act! Action is the normal and neurotic state of an age that has forgotten the contemplation which gives access to deeper truth and wisdom. I started to hit back at those haranguing me: ‘Don’t act, think!’ I was called an ‘idle intellectualizer’ by an eminently practical person, a person who a few years on is still no further on in reaching his goals. The problem with the world of such practical persons is that it is full of competing strategies and solutions and bereft of union and common cause, for the reason that it detached from the motivational economy. If it is time for anything, it is time to restore the balance between contemplation and action and thereby bridge the gap that has opened up between them. Scientific knowledge and technological know-how give the ability to act, but not the will. There is, therefore, a need to bridge the gap between theoretical reason (the realm of fact, knowledge of the external world) and practical reason (politics and ethics, the realm of values, will, the place of dialogue and deliberation where things get thrashed out in light of knowledge). Should the former attempt to ‘cannibalize’ the other (to use the biologist E.O. Wilson’s words, articulating the desire of the natural sciences to colonize ethics, philosophy, and sociology), the motivational economy and springs of action will be undermined, leaving only recourse to the inanities and insanities of behaviourism to move people to right action. God preserve us.
Although I was told to cut out stress in 2017, I’ve had nothing but stress since that day, from having to fight off the gang of robbers who invaded the house in 2018 (wretches who I still insist should be boiled in their own fat!) to bereavement in 2019, moving house in 2020/2021, two more dashes to hospital by ambulance in 2018 and 2020 and a million more things besides. Life, basically. The nice woman who took the anxiety classes I attended early in 2020 asked us all to guess what the biggest cause of stress in life was. I didn’t like to answer, but seeing as no-one else did I spoke up: ‘that’s just got to be people.’ I was right. ‘Present company excepted, of course.’ (I’m not sure I should have issued that exemption, mind, given her repeated reference to anxiety causing erectile dysfunction in an all-female class). So I’m done with fear, crisis, and anxiety. I will be addressing problems and issues that need to be addressed elsewhere and addressing them appropriately and effectively, giving myself time off for good behaviour. Always, I will be seeking out possibilities for enjoyment, making a point of keeping away from kiljoys. Someone posted on memories of Christmases past when people would string Christmas cards across the wall, and so I shared a nice photo and story of the old house in the early eighties, full of cards hanging from and pinned upon the walls. Within a few minutes someone commented that sending Christmas cards was ‘bad for the environment.’ I get the impression that some people consider human beings just being around and being active to be ‘bad for the environment.’ That’s not remotely my view, but I don’t need to be locking horns with those who think this way. It is hope and confidence that builds and sustains civilisations as well as personal health. There are narratives which seem designed to suck those things out of life, making the collapse feared all but inevitable. You need to keep such forces at a safe distance. I take a very different approach to such people, affirming hope and freedom against fear and force.
And now, having thoroughly disgraced myself with a torrent of words yet again, I had better go and enjoy me some Christmas, my most favourite time of the year.
Sad to say I missed Songs of Praise on Monday (20th December), since I don’t have a TV licence (I can live without endlessly complaining about the rubbish that is on TV – it’s not only mediocre and wrong-headed, it is just so predictable and boring). Seeing Katherine Jenkins at Christmas is about the only thing that could tempt me back. You can watch the show on BBC iplayer, but not without a licence. But I don’t care. I dare say I’ll see it one day. I can wait. In the meantime you can get some of the old shows on You Tube. And I have Katherine Jenkins’ Christmas Spectacular DVD, which she has signed. Charming lady.
I have to confess that for years I considered Katherine Jenkins to be somewhat antiseptic, plastic, soulless, mechanical, saccharine, anodyne and … I’d better stop there. I heard one critic describe her as ‘vanilla.’ Vanilla suits me fine; it’s my favourite ice cream flavour. It’s very simple and refreshing and full of happy memories of years ago. I saw her live last month (November 17th 2021) and I’ll take all the criticisms back. Katherine Jenkins at the Venue Cymru, Llandudno was the best concert I’ve seen since Little Richard in Liverpool 2000, and remarkably similar – colourful, vibrant, spectacular, with lots of alarming notes (he went for them, she got them). I think I passed out at one stage. Heart-warming and much needed.
I was messing around with some video editing software and took a clip from one of her lockdown shows, where she sings “We’ll Gather Lilacs,” a song of hope and dreams of reunion. It’s my most favourite song of all (with “Les Feuilles Mortes.”
I still think you’ve got to go some to top Olive Gilbert and Muriel Barron on this one, though.
The brilliant Ivor Novello. He wrote ‘Keep the Home Fires Burning’ too.
Where was I? Oh yes.
I’m off to see Bryn Terfel next year, if it ever comes. Now I know this guy is awesome, I’ve been listening to him for years.
It’s just a shame that all the choirs are still off here in Wales. When I’ve visited in the past I’ve been knocked out by the choirs at St John’s and other places. One day.
Bryn Terfel and Katherine Jenkins - Ave Verum Corpus - Faenol Festival 2005
Lyrically, this isn’t quite appropriate for Christmas, seeing as it concerns the crucifixion. But it’s the only film I can find of this pair singing together.
BBC One - Songs of Praise, Katherine Jenkins' Faith Journey (09/12/2018)
BBC One - Songs of Praise, Christmas Big Sing (23/12/2018)
I remember this one very well. This was the last Christmas I was to share with my dad. We would often watch Songs of Praise together. I think it was his equivalent of going to church. Plus it was always on at Sunday teatime, when there was nothing else on TV. So we defaulted to Songs of Praise. It always had a tranquil mood to it. And Katherine Jenkins sings a wonderful version of John Rutter’s “I Wish You Christmas” here.
And remember, if you’ve got the wit and will to survive these days, you’ve got what it takes to thrive.
The last Sunday of Advent is our final preparation for the great feast to come. The waiting is almost over and we are ready to welcome God’s greatest gift with praise, gratitude, and worship. Readiness is the watchword.
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