Oliver_Blog_Picture
My Holiday of Calm ReflectionI was on holiday with three families with children, all variously related to me in some way through either birth or marriage and so was tempted to write about my holiday in the lakes area of the French Massif Central.Its dramatic peaks and crags and swooping drops to great volumes of probably even deeper lakes below induce a kind of existential calm. The internet only worked after a lot of jiggery-pokery and phones not at all, effectively severing whatever umbilical connection we had to stressful Britain. I have little doubt that the countryside in deepest mid-France worked its magic on all of us.But freeing the brain to wander in this way can lead to dangerous territory. For instance, what was it about everyday life that breaks that vital connection with the natural world, the real world? Why do we allow our own personal striving and everyday concerns get in the way of really caring for one another? Because that is what we seem to be doing in order to get on in life. I have little doubt that there are very useful Darwinian survival principles underlying the imperative to narrow down the focus of care and concern to those in our immediate family. In times of stress and danger, we need to protect those closest to us. Ultimately, when the wolf comes to the door, we have to save ourselves.But that was then, and this is now. If we just follow our natural inclinations without allowing our intelligence to intervene, we eat high calorie foods and bloat out to unhealthy proportions. When we follow the news media, we select the tastiest themes and narratives that support our preconceptions about the world and this serves to deepen our prejudices, instead of challenging and perhaps overturning them. Why should we care more about others if it is going to cost us more money? Why should we buy into the notion of anthropogenic global warming if it’s going to cost us money and damage my lifestyle? Last night I spent some time with a group of friends with similar interests. We established that we all had come from different parts of the British Isles. We have a diversity of outlooks, and probably represent every colour on the political rainbow. We all had writing in common and this factor was the conduit for sympathy, for personal tragedy, and hilarious recollections concerning the disastrous character of many foreign toilets. And in between these things, we found time to deliver mutual support and advice on personal writing issues. The big difference was that we all knew one another, understood each other’s problems and wanted to help. But this is not where we as a society are going, so it seems. These little caches of human concern and compassion are counter-cultural and develop in the face of exhortations from larger society for more production and less waste. More exploitation and damn the cost. More selfish accrual of wealth and devil take the hindmost.This is not the kind of society I want to live in, but I very much do want to be a part of the kind of society that cares for its members in the way that WordWatchers looks after the constituent members of the group.There is no reason why we as a society shouldn’t face up to the simple fact that too much greed and selfishness serves us all badly. It’s just that we’re all too busy, or too lazy, or too greedy to make these choices, and we expect politicians to do it for us. Oliver.