No.5: REUNIFICATION The new client, United Kingdom, shuffles into the room and slumps down uncomfortably in the chair. There is no eye contact. We sit in silence. Finally there is a cough and a muffled voice, a sort of low growl: “Don’t really need to be here. Just been feeling a bit down lately.” Another silence. A tear rolls down from Scotland and lands somewhere near Darlington. Yes, if countries were people, the UK might be looking for a therapist right about now. It has been having a hard time of late. It was a summer of discontent. Before the Brexit referendum, this was a largely peaceful, united land that prided itself on never losing its great sense of humour, come what may—the land of Monty Python, Alan Partridge, the Office, Mr Bean. A nation that believed in fair play. A creative, resilient, quirky place that didn’t just tolerate difference and eccentricity but embraced it. The land of Churchill (half American), fish and chips (brought here by Spanish jews), beer (probably middle Eastern), sliced bread (American), England’s St. George (from Cappadocia, never visited our islands), Morris dancing (originally “Moorish”), the Queen (at least a little but German). The country whose two favourite dishes are chicken tikka masala and Chinese stir fry. The country that fought fascism and won. We used to be mostly in the middle, proud of our patchwork cultural history, a big-tent bell curve of British decency, tea and sympathy. Post-referendum, the bell curve has been turned on its head. The centre has been vacated, and you’re either jeering from the terraces on the star-spangled blue side, shouting “You idiots—what have you done to our future?” or you’re on the other side, amid a sea of red-and-white-painted faces, chanting “Get over it, we won.” With added swear words from both sides, obviously. The UK is at war with itself. When a person feels like that, in crisis, the old ways of doing things no longer work, and nothing seems to make sense any more. Time to take stock—with the help of a therapist, ideally—turn the spotlight on you and your life and, fortified by knowledge and love, make some changes. With a bit of luck, the breakdown turns into a breakthrough. The root of the problem It can be a small thing that triggers such a crisis. Someone inexplicably bursts into tears getting dressed for work, or their boss finds an empty vodka miniature in their desk, or they shout at a little old lady fumbling in the checkout queue, and their world unravels. It of course can be a big thing, too: illness, redundancy, divorce, trauma, bereavement. The UK’s problem—manifested by the referendum—began as a squabble within the Conservative Party. Since World War Two, there has been a growing chorus of Tory backbenchers—big and small “c” conservatives—who decry the rise of the European Union. They have tended to see Britain in heroic, benighted terms, as a proud, fiercely-independent land, in living memory the supposedly-magnanimous, beating heart of the biggest empire the world has even seen, shining the light of civilisation into the dark corners of the world and teaching them how to play cricket. The idea of being told what to do by the French, or the Germans, was beyond the pale. Who won the war anyhow? These nostalgic, elegiac chords were played at full volume by the likes of Enoch Powell, Margaret Thatcher and ... Nigel Farage. When traditional Tory voters began to flee to UKIP, the eurosceptic harrumphs turned into howls. PM and former PR man David Cameron was facing a mutiny. He hoped to quash it by calling the rebels’ bluff. He called for backup; he took it to the nation, gambling his job, career and the nation’s future. The referendum took on a life of its own. It grew. It turned into a referendum on everything. • Was it about the EU? Yes, although three recent consecutive eurosceptic Conservative Party leaders, William Hague, Iain Duncan Smith and Michael Howard, failed to gain any traction among voters on the issue. And in the immediate aftermath of the vote, an awful lot of people in the UK Googled “What is the EU?” • Was it about democracy? Yes, although shouldn’t Brexiteers also therefore be tirelessly campaigning to end the monarchy, abolish the House of Lords, the cronyism of the honours system, the influence of the City on domestic policy, and of Washington DC on foreign policy? • Was it about immigration? Yes, although overall immigrants are net positive contributors to the British economy, and since the days of the Normans, the Saxons, the Danes and the Hugenots, Britain, British culture and British people have been forged from outside influences. Perhaps what the referendum mostly was about was dissatisfaction with the status quo. As with the unfortunate American embrace of Donald Trump, Brexit was a protest vote against hard times and the struggle of life—exacerbated by a government policy of austerity that crippled poorer parts of the nation—with the finger of blame pointing every whichway: at politicians, the EU, immigrants, refugees, Muslims, “experts,” the Establishment, the media, old people, young people, rich people, poor people. Let’s hope the sunlit uplands of prosperity that the Brexiteers voted for come to pass. Regrettably, however, it seems more likely that there will instead be much more dissatisfaction to come. Cameron didn’t expect to lose. There was no plan. More than two months later, there seemingly still isn’t. No one seems to know how or when Brexit will happen or what it will look like. But hey, great news: our passports are going to be blue! The person in charge of implementing Brexit—the unelected pro-Remain Theresa May—has to get on with it now, directing enormous time and resources to extricating the UK from the EU and disentangling decades of legislation, and trying to set up new trade deals around the world with countries for whom the post-Brexit UK is, according to some, something of a laughing stock, and who are in the strong bargaining positioning of knowing, and knowing that we know, they we need them more than they need us. The PM also has to deal with all the domestic fallout: the possible disintegration of the UK, businesses threatening to make their own Brexit and head to the Continent, a tanking pound, the rise of racism. We might spend years at the side of the road, wiping all the mud off our weary old boots while other countries sprint by in new hi-tech gear that was probably made in China.
Right vs Left For countries, the internal battle is not quite id vs. super-ego, but rather left versus right. Which voice should prevail—which is correct? Attempts to deconstruct voter preference are always problematic. One large study, for instance claims that lower intelligence is more likely to be correlated with prejudice and right-wing voting. Another theory is that voting is determined by your overall worldview. As a species, we are capable of unbelievable kindness, generosity, altruism, creativity, diligence, resilience and love. We also can be very good at being selfish, telling lies, cheating, manipulating and stealing. Because of our individual biology, childhood, life experiences, relationships and education—and probably many other factors—each of us tend to resonate more with one or the other, the good or the bad, trust or mistrust. As a piece of research from the Royal Society puts it: “Greater orientation to aversive stimuli tends to be associated with right-of-centre and greater orientation to appetitive (pleasing) stimuli with left-of-centre political inclinations.” In very broad terms, this idea claims that the Righties generally want society to be about law and order, border controls, defence spending, monoculturalism, punishment rather than rehabilitation, limited benefits, competition that rewards the “winners.” They look to all that’s good in the past. The Lefties want society to be about caring and sharing, cooperation, equality, diversity, multiculturalism, rehabilitation rather than punishment, a welfare state, redistribution that benefits the underdogs. They look to all that’s good in the future. The Righties accuse the Lefties if being hopelessly naive, out of touch, idealistic, “soft.” The Lefties accuse the Righties of being greedy, uncompassionate, small-minded, dogmatic, “hard.” But of course these characterisations are hugely simplistic, as are the caricatures of the Remainers and the Leavers. The former included the young, ethnic minorities, urban lefties and the Scots, but also big business that benefits from cheap labour and free-market fundamentalists. The latter included the working class in disenfranchised former industrial towns, but also wealthy retired traditional county conservatives and a lunatic fringe of far-rightists and racists. The referendum result does not mean that the Leave position is vindicated and the Remain voice should ever more be silenced. Both voices are vital, ensuring a system of checks and balances. We need both walls and bridges; defence and offence. And both voices are in fact each a vast choir. To be whole, all the voices need to be heard. The way forward The evolution of national systems of government starts with warring tribes and feudal empires, moves to totalitarian, authoritarian or dictatorial regimes, then onto the 20th century representative democracy of the UK today. But people do not feel represented. Politicians are the least-trusted people in the nation. Brexit at least partially have been a vote of no confidence in the current system. Instead of entrusting politicians to do the right thing, might we herald the birth of a new, fairer social democracy that better involves the populace, and better serves them, too? If there were a referendum about having more referendums, wouldn’t the likely response be a resounding “yes”? Consider these points (from an earlier post: Does your government make you happy?):
• The Scandinavian system or “Nordic model” of government features high taxes, a large, well-run welfare state, a high standard of free education and healthcare, and low levels of inequality. The machine works for betterment of the people, not the other way round. (In John Rawls “A Theory of Justice,” he demonstrates through his “original position” experiment that if people don’t know how they will end up in an imaginary society, they will generally opt for a fair, redistributive political and economic system that treats all fairly, maximising the prospects of the least well-off.) The Nordic model is a system that appears to make people happy: Denmark and its close cousin Iceland, plus Norway, Finland, Sweden, and the Netherlands, are all in the top-8 happiest nations in the world. Why isn’t such a superior form of governance the rule rather than the exception? (“Yes,” people say, “but these are countries with small populations and low immigration”—as though water, sunlight and soil were only good for some trees but not others.) • According to the World Happiness Report: “66% of respondents in the Netherlands and 61% in Sweden answered that most people can be trusted, compared with just 35% in the US and 28% in Russia. Moreover, comparing the extent of trust in the 1981-84 sampling period with the recent period, trust rose in Sweden (from 57 to 61%), while it declined in the United States (from 45 to 35%).” • Scandinavian cities tend to do well in the famous “lost wallet” experiments in which full wallets are left lying around to see how many get returned or handed in. • The happiest nation, Switzerland, meanwhile, is the closest state in the world to a direct democracy. There are referendums on town, city, district and national level. They don’t just scrawl an X on a ballot paper once every 5 years. The Swiss really have a say in how their country is run. They are invested in their government, and vice versa. The times they are a’changing. Donald Trump’s fearmongering, xenophobia, and foghorn declarations about the virtues of greed are like the terminal groans and expirations of a witless dinosaur, ignorant of his impending extinction. Whether you are a Leaver or Remainer, Brexit showed that the British are hungry for democracy. We want to be heard. Brexit was a crack in the walls of the house that was built on the old order of patronage, privilege and politics as usual—a crack that lets in the light. Primitive societies kill people, then evolve to enslaving them, then to giving them the vote. The next stage is to listen to them. After a few months of hearing all the differing viewpoints and “standing in the spaces” between them, the client, our dear old friend UK, started to feel much better. The therapy came to a natural end. “It’s all about considering all the different views, and being fair,” said Scotland, speaking for the whole person, who now was sitting tall and proud and relaxed. “The more we listen to all the voices, the better we feel.” The cure for a sick democracy, it turns out, is more democracy. No. 4: POLARISATION The nation is feverish. It is infected with a new plague—the first recorded case of Brexitosis. Before the affliction, Britain was a largely peaceable nation. If they thought about the European Union at all, most Brits could probably agree that it was a bit meddlesome. And who were these people anyway? Yes—bossy, interfering, undemocratic and in need of reform. A union with you Europeans, fine, but we’d rather not have an “ever-closer union” thank you very much. We’ll shake hands with you, our neighbours, but no hugging or kissing if you please. What’s that you say? You’d like us to give up our 12-centuries-old currency for the brightly-coloured banknotes of the Euro? Gosh is that the time? We really must be going. Awfully nice to see you! But then, suddenly, the supposed British tolerance and reserve were reversed. In an attempt to quell an uprising in the backbenches of the Conservative Party, David Cameron’s call-my-bluff referendum happened. A complex issue was reduced to an in-or-out, yes-or-no, old-Etonian-Dave-or-Old-Etonian-Boris choice and served up to nation of people starved of a voice. And how we all shouted! The veneer of politeness was stripped away, and long dormant furies and humiliations and aggressions were unleashed. Living rooms, public places and internet forums burned with acidic invective. Britain started to be at war with itself. Its very name—the “United” Kingdom—came to sound ironic. We were no longer one people but two. We retreated from each other, to opposite corners of the ring. Leavers vs Remainers is a fight that took on a tribal quality, akin to Cavaliers vs Roundheads, Mods vs Rockers, United vs City. The Remainers portrayed the Leavers as all kinds of things, but mostly as a bunch of stupid and/or old racists. The Leavers characterised the Remainers as all kinds of things, too, but mostly as a naive, deluded, out-of-touch or uncaring urban elite that looked down on the working class. Simultaneously, the Remainers suddenly cast aside any prior reservations about the EU and anointed Jean-Claude Juncker as some kind of beatified visionary. For the Leavers, the EU was no longer a mere bumbling bureaucracy but a sinister, power-crazed, fascistic regime. The media stuck to their predictable, flame-fanning “we-good-they-bad” scripts. Stories about the rise in racist attacks across the country after the vote, or the Brexit voters who regretted their choice, or the parallels between Brexit voters and Donald Trump supporters across the Atlantic seemed to further the redneck stereotype. On the other side, one typical pro-Leave column described Remainers as “rich, metropolitan types” who “fear for their second homes in Tuscany and the south of France” and “fear they might no longer get dirt-cheap nannies and au pairs from Eastern Europe.” On a recent Sunday, two consecutive stories appeared on a Facebook news feed on my phone: • “Britain just got its first concrete sign that Brexit will destroy the economy” (Independent) • “IMF 'clowns' forced to admit Britain’s economy is GROWING despite predicting Brexit doom” (Sunday Express) In the tabloid world, what Nietzsche wrote in 1887 is true: “It is precisely facts that do not exist, only interpretations.” Research and polls generally suggested that these factors tended to correlate more with a Leave vote: being older, less educated, unemployed or retired, white, English or Welsh. And these factors tended to correlate more with a Remain vote: being young, educated, employed, not white, Scottish or Irish. But these are very loose, broad brushstrokes and anyway, as we know, correlation is not the same as causality. (There are innumerable absurd examples of this; there is for instance a very strong correlation between margarine use and divorce in Maine, or US highway fatalities and the volume of lemons imported from Mexico.) But the need to stereotype “the other”—the enemy—is strong. When I wrote on the World of Therapy Facebook page that people who voted Leave aren't any one type; nor are people who voted Remain, one person responded: “We ARE two different groups of people. WE, are Patriots and believe in democracy. Whereas remainers are a bunch of bitter and twisted, racist traitors who don't believe in democracy. We don't need a discussion because we've had it and we won. So suck it up buttercup WE ARE OUT.” Whose side are you on? Human life falls neatly into binaries: male or female, night or day, yin or yang, good or evil, yes or no, here or there, this or that, crunchy peanut butter or smooth. Philosophers through the ages have extolled progress through the resolution of two conflicting ideas. Dialectic exchange, or Hegel’s thesis-antithesis-synthesis model, goes something like this: Person 1: “I think X.” Person 2: “Oh yeah? Well, I think the exact opposite. I think Y.” Person 1: “Y? You’ve got to be kidding me!” Person 2: “Are you calling me a Nazi?” After a debate—or the building of walls, invading countries, ethnic cleansing, war—A and B find a way to integrate and resolve their positions: They agree on Z! Person 1: “Yes of course—Z. It seems so obvious now.” Person 2: “Remember when we used to fight about X and Y?” Person 1: “It seems so silly now!” Person 3: “Excuse me, I couldn’t help but overhear you talking about Z. Have you ever considered A instead?” Persons 1 and 2: “Oh f*** off!” How do we make choices? Why do some people gravitate to X while others fall for Y? Humans like to regard themselves as rational and logical, able to make conscious optimal choices. In practice, however, we are often more like wild animals. Heidegger said we discover our intentions through our actions rather than the other way round, and neuroscientific studies have reinforced that. Our first response to situations often is an immediate, unconscious, emotional one, occurring in a part of the brain called the amygdala—two little almond-shaped lumps that play a key role in the animal/mammalian brain. The human, thinking part, the cerebral cortex, then quickly has to come up with a rationalisation, like a PR manager left to explain why his rock star client trashed the hotel room. Neuroboffin Antonio Damasio says: “We are always hopelessly late for consciousness.” There have been some lovely experiments to illustrate how we retrofit our thoughts to accommodate or justify our inexplicable actions. In Festinger and Carlsmith’s 1959 research project, people were made to do a really boring task, then for a very small fee invited to lie about how interesting it was to new recruits—they happily did so. Surely they weren’t the kind of people that could be bought so easily; to resolve their “cognitive dissonance” they decided the task had actually been quite interesting after all. To be at the mercy of the immediate, instinctive gut reaction—the emotional traffic light—is often to make irrational, definitive, ill-considered responses. Sometimes they can work in our favour. But sometimes not. By the time the cerebral cortex arrives on the scene, the damage might have already been done: you’ve tipped the salad bowl over the nasty lady’s head or run a red light or signed up for the pointless extended warranty scheme. Ideally the grey matter sketches in some shades of grey before it’s too late, allowing for more tempered, nuanced responses. That primal, visceral first impression allows us to make snap judgments and decisions, navigate a complex world, and stave off the unbearable uncertainty of our existence. It can powerfully bind us—to a religion, a political party, a celebrity, a brand. It is not generally diminished by reason or logic. It can be a kind of love. It can also be a kind of hate for “the other.” Hate at first sight. Christopher Hitchens, who saw all religions as incapable of standing up to any kind of rational scrutiny, wrote in “Letters to a Young Contrarian”: “It will very often be found that people are highly attached to illusions or prejudices, and are not just the sullen victims of dogma or orthodoxy. If you have ever argued with a religious devotee, for example, you will have noticed that his self-esteem and pride are involved in the dispute and that you are asking him to give up something more than a point in argument. The same is true of visceral patriots, and admirers of monarchy and aristocracy. Allegiance is a powerful force in human affairs; it will not do to treat someone as a mental serf if he is convinced that his thralldom is honorable and voluntary.”
Western foreign policy since World War Two has a pretty dismal track record, dropping bombs on dozens of countries, invading distant lands overtly and covertly, doing deals with dictators one minute then demonising them the next--embracing Saddam Hussein, say, or calling Nelson Mandela a terrorist—buying or selling arms or anything else to or from practically anyone or doing or saying practically anything if it serves the dollar, with very little regard to decency or morality or honesty. It’s not clear if this quote attributed to wartime US president Franklin Delano Roosevelt about the Nicaraguan dictator Anastasia Samoza was ever actually uttered, but it sums up American foreign policy: “He may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch.” And Britain blindly follows America in its misadventures, as the Chilcot report showed, with a few notable exceptions like Vietnam (thank you Harold Wilson). People who write books or publish newspapers or lead political or religious movements that promote xenophobia and division, often invoking as inevitable a “clash of civilizations”—eg. in Somalia, Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia—are guilty of inciting violence and hatred and are responsible for much suffering. Can’t we give these eighth century, eight-year-old you’re-an-infidel/barbarian-no-I’m-not-you-are arguments the contempt they deserve? Are the Scots and the English suddenly to remember, I don’t know, the Battle of Flodden? And take up arms again? This war of words has been going on between Muslims and Europeans ever since they first came into contact, in 732, each side denouncing the other as a means of justifying exclusion, discrimination and attack. Edward Said calls this “Orientalism,” a system of thought by which dominant powers establish versions of “knowledge” and “truth” about both themselves and those over whom they wish to exert power, creating a “drastically polarized geography dividing the world into two unequal parts.” The West and “the Orient” are constructed in the West as polar opposites, the former as rational, developed, humane and superior, the latter, a monolithic, homogenous “other”—barbaric, inferior, backward, aberrant, unchanging. The “other” is to be feared, contained, controlled or destroyed. Western Islamophobes like to cite barbaric bits of the Quran as “evidence” of some kind of inherent barbarism despite their own religion’s sacred texts being filled with equally primitive imperatives that are just as comically irrelevant to today. In Britain, Christians often assert “Christian values”—these presumably no longer include a biblical call to cut off people’s hands or stone people to death or otherwise punish people who work on a Sunday, or have sex with someone they’re not married to, or have parents who aren’t married, or who are women who have had sex, or who talk in church, or defend their husbands, or who actually are just women, or people who are gay or disabled or who masturbate or eat bacon. Those who regard ”Muslims”—1.6 billion people, almost a quarter of humanity—as a fixed, homogenous, united group of people who speak with one voice or think with one mind, need to get out more. As the saying goes, blaming all Muslims for appalling acts of terrorism by Islamic extremists is like blaming all musicians for Kanye West. It’s frightening how easily people can buy into loud, simplistic, aggressive, finger-pointing explanations as to why life is hard, especially when the finger points down, to the powerless, rather than up, to the powerful. The best response to trumped up men—it is usually men—who try to peddle fear and xenophobia, whether they are a US president-to-be, a zealot with a cellphone and a megaphone, or the racist next door, is to hold up your hand and say, no, I disagree, I believe you are mistaken. Carl Jung said that when we identify with one end of a continuum, we project the other end: I am good, right, well; you are bad, wrong, ill. But the bad bits are in us too. They are our shadow. The shadow keeps us grounded. What happens next? There are four possible outcomes in a conflict characterized by polarised postions, according to Wood and Petriglieri in “Transcending Polarization: Beyond Binary Thinking”: 1) a complete split or dissociation of the opposing positions, that is, the end of a connection or relationship; 2) a complete overcoming of the opposition, essentially, annihilation of one position by the other; 3) the possibility that no significant change takes place and the positions remain in a more or less stable relationship of continued strife; 4) synthesis, which is identical to neither of the two original conflicting positions but emerges from the tension and includes elements from both. How will the Leavers and Remainers ever be friends again? Is there a cure for Brexitosis? Will the patient recover? NEXT TIME: No. 5: Reunification |
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March 2023
AuthorJohn Barton is a counsellor, psychotherapist, blogger and writer with a private practice in Marylebone, Central London. To contact, click here. |