Nil Desperandum

Watching – much against my will – an extract from the last X Factor series with a  family member recently I was reminded of an old piece of journalism which caused uproar at the time, but which I have always admired.

In Another Voice, Auberon Waugh’s Spectator column,  he once complained that Bruce Forsyth’s return to TV screens was indicative of the feeble-minded state of a country he now wanted to flee. And by the time the column was in print he had - albeit only to his summer home in France. By comparison, I was only able to flee upstairs for the evening and read a good book.

On Waugh’s return he found a letter from a woman who wrote to say that his reminder of the Forsyth Factor had been the last straw, and that she now intended to kill herself. Waugh quickly wrote to try and offer some solace, but his letter was returned unopened, and he subsequently learnt she had indeed done as she said.

There was outrage when he revealed all this in a subsequent column, but I cannot help admiring the style and dignity of the woman. I am only sad that she felt things were so bad that she couldn’t go on.

For as Waugh concluded: “There are countless horrible things happening all over the country, and horrible people prospering but we must never allow them to disturb our equanimity or deflect us from our sacred duty to sabotage and annoy them whenever possible.”

Sound advice indeed.

By all means, comfort the disturbed if it gives you pleasure. But if your time is limited, first make it your priority to disturb the comfortable.

Style, not culture

Even since my last post, it appears that efforts by the powerful to impose cultural conformity are being stepped up. In fact, on the Isle of Man in 2014 national culture may well become compulsory (see http://www.isleofman.com/News/details/53890/island-of-culture-2014 ,

http://www.gov.im/lib/news/artscouncil/gobackgiveback.xml and

http://www.islandofculture.im/ for example), which is alarming for the civilised in general and individualists in particular.

We should note at once that all those cited as examples of ‘Manx culture’ are actually individuals who, through hard work and talent, have managed to escape it. This tells us all we need to know about the inanity and inconvenience being imposed. To anyone who has lived here, even in recent decades, it is obvious that the first thing the talented or intelligent do upon reaching adulthood and/or getting even the sketchiest off-island job offer is to leave and never return.

The real question, then, might be how those of us who choose to stay and resist can do so without at least meeting the drab host halfway.

Firstly, beware, dear reader, all calls to nation, company, family values or other abstract entities to which we are aligned without our true consent. Calls which, by use of the culture ‘trigger word’, appeal to our civilised nature are a sneakier variant on this, but the irony is that in answering them we would actually shed the last remnants of civility.

We must be constantly vigilant against ‘the Big C’. Always remember that whenever anyone in authority or representing an institution urges others to engage in culture then what they really ask is conformity to a plan drawn up solely for the benefit of those who need to stay in authority.

The remedy lies not in new age twaddle, petty-bourgeois self-improvement or management-speak but in a rigorous mix of self-discipline and detachment. Odd as it sounds, the idle arts are harder to pursue than life as a corporate collaborator, religious zealot, political extremist or other human vegetables whose intellect is indistinguishable from an actual couch-potato.

Consider, for example, the relative difficulties of staring at a TV, computer screen or mobile phone for half an hour and staring at a wall. The first requires only that you switch off your brain and pretend to be working/networking/learning. The second requires a will of iron and the mind control of a zen or yogic master.

Never try the full half hour all at once. Start with no more than five minutes and work up your applied sloth gradually over the months and years in small increments or you may end up in middle management or the civil service.

Ally this to quiet and disciplined reading – the hard or soft sciences, politics, engineering, architecture…. even the arts. The topic hardly matters, just the intent to build serious knowledge of the way the world works - and never because it will improve your job prospects.

Find (even insist on) a time or place with no  aural or visual distractions, and take notes as you read – both to consolidate the knowledge and to suggest further reading.

With time, you will never turn on the TV or a computer screen unless with a fixed purpose and, having achieved it, will turn it off again out of sheer boredom or irritation. An unfortunate side-effect is that you also find the moron-mediacentric conversation of workmates and other compulsory companions more irritating. A strength is that you find it easier to tune out (which in turn makes you calmer in the workplace) and to only tune in when a problem blows up (which, thanks to your increasing in-depth knowledge of the real world, you are far better able to solve).

This will take years of practice. But the true individualist gradually realises he or she is in the elegant ‘anti-lifestyle’ for life. So the more you practice, the less the problem.

Being casual is the greatest conformism of all

"With numbing regularity good people were seen to knuckle under the demands of authority and perform actions that were callous and severe. Men who are in everyday life responsible and decent were seduced by the trappings of authority, by the control of their perceptions, and by the uncritical acceptance of the experimenter's definition of the situation, into performing harsh acts. A substantial proportion of people do what they are told to do, irrespective of the content of the act and without limitations of conscience, so long as they perceive that the command comes from a legitimate authority" Stanley Milgram, 1965

The following ‘corporate communication’ – drearily typical of many such missives – was brought to my attention recently:

‘Dear All,

Following the key communication that was sent out to all key communicators ……. this is a reminder that all Fridays will now be dress down starting tomorrow.

This is to ensure cultural alignment with our other offices across the Group.’

Note in particular that use of the word which drove Herr Goering to violence - in his case for quite the wrong reason, while for us the reason would be right but the response should be less explosive.

This handy example of over-officious inanity does, however, give me an excuse to answer a common query, i.e., how should individualists respond to the ‘Dress Down Friday’ corporate phenomenon?

This may be the most important question of our time. The answer, as ever, is with dignity, good manners and a very straight face.

But in order to reach that conclusion we must first ask who caused the phenomena: the answer to which is that your employer demanded it.

And was this demand because of extensive research and  ‘feedback’  from you and your workmates?

No, it is far more likely that your boss is slipping away for another long weekend’s drinking with fellow misogynists. Being too lazy to change from his business suit, he prefers to come to the office in his golf-clown outfit. He then needs to be seen to have taken a ‘management decision’ rather than being revealed as a rich, inbred slob.

Having established that, many other things become plain. Because there is - in truth - no sadder sight in the modern world than the boss class or their most devoted lickspittles  trying to act cool and casual.

They are the leading contemporary  examples of what the late Derek Jarman used to call “drabs” . This was not just his way of marking out homophobes, but in a wider sense dull, beige people who – unfortunately – control far too much of the world.

And the harder they try to be as one with their employees, customers, electorate and ordinary members of the public in general the more revolting their appearance and behaviour.

Such horrible, petty-minded  people with their fake camaraderie - as if anyone with a gram of taste would wreck their ears and dull their wits being stuck in a pub or on some frightful corporate jolly with them. Boasting how much their cars are worth, pretending knowledge of or interest in sports or family life, playing incessantly with their techno-toys in a desperate attempt to look simultaneously busy and up-to-the-minute……..

Yuk!!

We cannot go along with this enforced slobbery. Because there is nothing voluntary, life-affirming or even progressive about it.

In addition, a brief perusal of any company’s ‘policy statement’ on ‘acceptable casual wear’ reveals little but an attempt to stamp out the last efforts of employees to retain some humanity and individuality in the most awful daily situation they could find themselves in – the workplace.

Who amongst us would want to be as badly dressed as his or her employer, especially when that employer is mis-dressed to crawl around some ghastly plastic  pseudo-pub with other pseudo-people?

So the simplest form of resistance is to ignore it: turn up to work dressed, as usual, in clothes in which you could, if necessary, meet someone deserving of respect – or failing that senior government officials, royalty or international leaders of finance. Then, when you unexpectedly encounter a major foreign potential client or business partner in the car park, enjoy being mistaken for a company director, politely introducing an abomination in badly-fitting polyester as your MD and watching the faces of both parties drop in dismay.

The beauty of such a tactic is that the corporate world is programmed only to deal with insurgency rooted in the real culture of the business world – dishonesty, the avoidance of responsibility, fear of progress, imagination or objective knowledge. The primary fear of any business executive is that a younger, more ruthless clone will lie, cheat and steal his or her way to the MD’s chair. Thus the real business culture within any business culture centres on the attempts of those in power to prevent the young pretenders stealing it. Honest, self-respecting people who seek no power can simply stand aside and watch as these sad and desperate bores attempt to wipe each other out.

‘Management’ has no answer to the mannered rebel who turns up on time, treats colleagues and clients with respect, puts in a full day’s work and then simply goes home and forgets about it.

Resistance, then, rather than being futile is actually quite facile - and fun.

Pity ye not

Some ask: “Is it fair to consider pushy charities and their smug or self-righteous volunteers a nuisance?”

The simple answer is “Yes”. Because while nobody wants to snub genuine individual acts of charity any organisation that pays senior executives over £100,000 per year (over £200,000 for some notorious professional scaremongers) is in the compassion business for business reasons, not compassionate ones.

Historically, the concept of charity may have begun as acts of benevolence by the powerful (often, of course, on the understanding that they would pass into heaven with rather more ease than their camels could pass through the eyes of needles), but the modern charity format, as originally introduced by Quaker merchants, is primarily a tax avoidance strategy, though pursued on ethical grounds. Oddly, though major charities and their key sponsors spend far more time taking advice from tax lawyers and HMRC than self-confessed business corporations of equivalent size, none want to admit this.

We also need to recognise that one person’s ‘ethics’ is another’s flat earth bigotry, and just because a particular ethical framework is championed by the powerful does not mean it is correct . Or even reasonable.

What other idea, conceived and sustained by powerful elites, would you accept at face value? Why, then, do we meekly accept that the charity profession is a ‘good thing’?

Try, for example, carefully examining the views and policies of any large charity towards the unfortunate as if you were reading the manifesto of a fascist cult. You may be startled to find how little there is to choose between the misanthropy expounded by either party. Both, for example, maintain that certain groups of people are simply incapable of governing themselves, and resist all attempts for them to do so by either democratic political means or the commonly accepted codes of business practice.

Neither should one feel guilty about crossing the street to avoid a ‘chugger’, or putting the phone down on any fundraiser rude enough to pester you at home because you cannot get proper details about  a charity’s work and policies from their website without giving your phone number. Such nuisances are not volunteers. There is a market for professional fundraising companies who pester the public and take a 50/50 split with major charities.  The charities find it more ‘cost efficient’ to do this than to actually risk answering questions from the public, never mind consorting with the great unwashed in order to attract anyone but bored socialites as a volunteer base.

Some will say that this leads to only the cutest puppies and orphans getting money thrown at them, and there may be some truth in this. But the problem only arose when the charity profession reduced misery to a commodity, and turned the competition for funds into a corporate war in order to maintain their relative market positions. That is a problem they, and nobody else, created. If any of them had even a scrap of conscience then their last professional duty would be to solve it before declaring themselves redundant.

For far too long, charities have had a soft ride because we are not prepared to treat middle class professional spongers as we do common street beggars, and ask them just what they will do all day if we are fool enough to hand over our small change.

But we are also at fault. We must accept that every pound we give to a charity whose staff and policies we have not vetted, accounts we have not checked and past record we have not researched is a pound which could inflict more misery on a vulnerable person, or just subsidise another freeloader on another foreign holiday or ‘gap year’ (so called because the poorly – if expensively - educated folk who take them have empty spaces between the left and right ear and can afford to air them for years at a time).

Always remember that charity is personal, an individual act of kindness, so must always be something done from choice, not compulsion. It is not a duty, and should never be reduced to one.

If the real problem, as some charities intimate, is that too few people have too much power over too many, then charities are not the answer either, because they just transfer the power from one corporation to another with equally dubious ‘vision statements’ for future development. Instead of the dispossessed of the earth being controlled by multinational business corporations (who collaborate with governments and each other in order to maintain their power base) their fate will lie in the hands of multinational charitable foundations, who also collaborate with any government, business corporation and super-wealthy individual providing the bulk of their funding in order to maintain their powerbase.

Beneath the chimera of 'opposition’ it is strictly ‘business as usual’ between governments and the corporations, be they straightforward business or charitable ones. The poor and the dispossessed have no say in the matter. At best, like voters in Western pseudo-democracies, they may sometimes get to choose their parasites and oppressors.

Another approach is, rather than ‘who should I be kind to’, try asking ‘do I harm anyone’ and organise your life, as far as is practical, to avoid that. Consider your purchases, your job, and your relationships with family and community. Just who is affected, and how, by what you buy, how big your car or house is, the products and services you produce at work, the people you do (or do not) socialise with. How you deal with that, what decisions you make about how you interact with the immediate community or the wider world, it is not for anyone else to decide or to judge.

If you still feel guilty enough to give to ‘good causes’, then the only responsible thing to do is fully research one or two charities that interest you, being careful to consider their critics at least as well as their PR. You can then ignore the rest with a clear conscience. Set yourself a strict monthly budget , arrange some direct debits then feel free to treat any approach from a professional fundraiser in the same way you deal with, say, a cold-calling double-glazing salesman or Jehovah’s Witness.

Do any of this and you may never save an entire nation of starving people, but then, neither do charities. On the other hand, you cannot add to the sum of human misery by inflicting self-righteous halfwits with messianic intent on them either.

Be a law unto yourself

Most of us long for a kinder, more pleasant world, so are well disposed towards those who treat us well. This works in your favour if you happen to find petty byelaws, or even major acts of parliament, illogical, immoral, insane….or just a huge inconvenience to a happy and productive life.
In truth, you can probably ignore any law of the land with absolute impunity, as long as you do it elegantly enough.
When I say this I do not advocate breaking the law. I only advocate making your own, informed decisions and treating others with respect in all things. Your informed decision, though, may well be that the law is an ass and that we are governed by donkeys.
I certainly do not advocate a criminal lifestyle, because it is so uncouth. Career criminals get caught precisely because they insist on behaving at all times in a violent, anti-social manner instead of just getting on with their lives in a way that does not bother others (which is the intent of any true stylist or individualist). As psychologists suggest, perhaps they choose to get caught, either because they lack the self-discipline to live outside prisons or because they see prison as part of the lifestyle.
In fact, the uber-conformism of both law-enforcers and criminals is anathema to any stylist, while the similarities between these supposed sworn enemies is really too funny for words. Who else could such bolt-necked bores possibly find to talk to, if not each other?
I simply say it is possible to live outside the law, in the same way that it is possible to ride a bike without stabilisers. Just think of it as deciding to grow up and take responsibility.
For example, if I hear someone say “You ought not to........” I listen respectfully to their reasoning, then decide if there is any sense in it. But if I hear someone say “You must not.....…” all I think is “I must escape this knee-jerking simpleton and avoid him at all costs in the future”.
Because our approach to laws and regulations in general, rather than to blindly obey them, should be to understand why they are there and if those reasons stem from common sense and decency, or just common spite, pig-ignorance or even superstition.
In some cases – such as certain sections of the highway code – there may be good reasons, so there would be some common sense consensus to go along with the thing. There you conform not because you must, but because it makes sense to a reasonable person, and it is the thing you would do anyway, without threat or reward.
In far too many cases though, it may be for no good reason other than because some inadequate needed to demonstrate power over others: in which case why on earth would you let them, unless there is an immediate threat of violence or other danger?
In such situations there is an easy solution. Keep your dignity and appear to conform until the danger or simpleton posing it goes away, then carry on as your common sense suggests and as if institutional idiocy was not an everyday constraint to civilisation.
To paraphrase that cliché about forests and fallen trees – if there is a one way system in your supermarket car park, and no other cars in the car park, does it matter how you get to a space?
Far too often, the only policeman preventing us from going about our lives in a happy, inoffensive and adult manner is the one in our own head. All I am suggesting is that instead of being content to mentally police ourselves (and like the police serving only the powerful and corrupt), we should go up the food chain and mentally judge ourselves instead. Who else, in all honesty, is fit to judge any self-respecting adult?