Reasons To Be Cheerful - But Not Today

I'm troubled about being a miserablist.  It's not because of the recent information from the latest psyche-soma study that cynics have a higher risk of heart attacks - that's clearly nonsense since everyone knows, and I can tell you for certain, that cynics don't have hearts.  Obviously.  Nor is it the result of the declaration of a young Christian woman who recently told me that 'more good things than bad things happen in the world.'  I asked her to elaborate, for her evidence.  'Oh,' she said, blushing prettily. 'It would take me far longer than you  have time for to go into such a complicated question.'  I offered her all the time in the world.  Silence.  And I'm comfortable as a grouch - habit is everything.  But still there are things to celebrate and they should be celebrated.  And just as soon as I've done howling at the latest confirmation of the destruction of any sense of the importance of anything not totally material, I'm going to post about some really lovely things.  About how happy I am to find myself in the post-Thatcher, please-god post-Blair world, and all the delights that somehow, miraculously, have survived.  I'm sure I'll think of something.

In the meantime, here is a quote from Mark Steel in today's Independent.

In his book, Robin Cook recalled a conversation in which Tony Blair justified sending his son to a selective school, saying he didn't want his kids to end up like those of Harold Wilson. It was pointed out that Wilson's sons went to a comprehensive school, and one became a headmaster, the other a professor. To which Blair said: "Well, I certainly hope my children do better than that."

Actually, I'm not sure it's possible to be a cynic and so completely dismayed by reading that.  It shouldn't be a surprise, what has happened to education and the arts can only be explained by having ten years of government by a man (and his sad power-corrupted crew) who feels that teaching is a loser's option.

In the 1970's there was a burst of excitement about education.  Lots of us taught in comprehensive schools because we thought there wasn't anything more important to do, and that anyone could be made enthusiastic about learning with the right presentation and respect for them as persons.  Some of us stopped teaching, the energy went (for this we are to blame) and others took to an easy version that involved equalising learning from the top down.  That old terrible phrase 'too clever by half' was heard in staff rooms. The rest is GCSE and A level History, English literature, the current national curriculum, and university undergraduates and general readers who aren't expected to engage with anything excitingly difficult.

I will cheer up - but not today.

Comments

[FM]

Dammit, yes! Thank you...

[JM]

Do you mean the George Perec quote -posted on 7 Feb?

[FM]

JM: Where is that quotation from? Am curious...
(Sorry to hijack, Jenny!)

[JM]

well - isn't Tony Blair in such a position that such quips should simply not be made.
and this ..
"It is not that you hate men, why would you hate them? Why would you hate yourself? If only membership of the human race were not accompanied by this insufferable din, if only these few pathetic steps taken into the animal kingdom did not have to be bought at the cost of this perpetual, nauseous dyspepsia of words, projects, great departures! But it is too high a price to pay for opposable thumbs, an erect stature, the incomplete rotation of the head on the shoulders: this cauldron, this furnace, this grill which is life, these thousands of summonses, incitements, warnings, thrills, depressions, this enveloping atmosphere of obligations, this eternal machine for producing, crushing, swallowing up, overcoming obstacles, starting afresh and without respite, their insidious terror which seeks to control every day, every hour of your meagre existence!"

...is what I have been trying to explain to others since the death of my closest person -we are animals. We create around and for ourselves, and for our own self image - a life style more sophisticated than life really is, and far more complex than life should be, as if this justifies and explains something which we are not really.

[David Nix]

Mightn't Mr. Blair have been making a joke? Or at least thought he was? That reads like the kind of offhand quip I might toss out with a chuckle. Or Mr. Bush might toss out without one.

[Mike C.]

Compulsory optimism is a corrosive force in the world -- a sort of mass whistling in the dark ("I'm really excited about ...", "An opportunity, not a problem ...", etc.). To call the caution and realism and others "cynical" is merely a hurtful reflex, and a form of cynicism in itself i.e. to doubt the sincerity of others' beliefs and motives. What is needed in the world is Gramsci's prescription: "Optimism of the will, pessimism of the intellect".

[Teju]

Do you ever notice a strange sort of loyalty among miserabilists?

Every time I'm tempted to cheer up and be bovine like the masses, I remember that facing our appalling condition squarely is something that--while it could drag me further into the depths--could also provide a smidgen of comfort to a co-miserabilist.

And just that thought, that my honesty about how bad things are could make someone else feel less alone in this atrocity of a universe, well, shucks, it's enough to warm my cold little heart. Or would do, if I had a heart.

Maybe this is what your happy little Christian knows but doesn't yet know she knows?...Nah, I don't think so either.

[Jenny Diski]

Dear JD
Thank you for that. Your Perec quote put me in the pink. I love the smell of despair in the evening - it smells like me...

As far as I can tell the Blair quote is accurate. Not likely that Robin Cook would have made it up.

Ta
Jenny

[Jenny Davidson]

Well, since you are in a grim mood anyway (surely Blair didn't REALLY say that, did he?!?), it is a good opportunity for me to inflict on you a particular favorite miserabilist quotation of mine from Georges Perec's "A Man Asleep":

It is not that you hate men, why would you hate them? Why would you hate yourself? If only membership of the human race were not accompanied by this insufferable din, if only these few pathetic steps taken into the animal kingdom did not have to be bought at the cost of this perpetual, nauseous dyspepsia of words, projects, great departures! But it is too high a price to pay for opposable thumbs, an erect stature, the incomplete rotation of the head on the shoulders: this cauldron, this furnace, this grill which is life, these thousands of summonses, incitements, warnings, thrills, depressions, this enveloping atmosphere of obligations, this eternal machine for producing, crushing, swallowing up, overcoming obstacles, starting afresh and without respite, their insidious terror which seeks to control every day, every hour of your meagre existence!