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via "Les Confessions" on 08/07/05
For some reason, I always associate calamitous events with work. This is not intended to be a clever quasi-Marxist point, merely that my memory of such things is linked to being at work. On September 11th 2001 for instance, I was working in a call-centre. Some whispers had gone around that a plane had crashed into a building in America, but it was not clear what was going on exactly. None of the call-takers (or "first liners") had internet access and radios/TVs were obvious unavailable. One of the managers who did have internet access managed to get some sort of video feed from one of the news sites. Other people crowded around his desk, perhaps 10-12 at a time, to watch and re-watch what had happened.
It was incredibly frustrating to not know what was going on at all - not because I have (or had) any family in New York, and not because it really affected my life directly (at the time at least) but I just really wanted to know. Fortunately some kind team-leader forwarded around via company e-mail some article from the BBC website. Other pieces of information would filter in from customers, or at least the people who did phone in (call volume dropped very rapidly as people watched television and such).
As always, it was difficult to comprehend exactly what had happened. People immediately personalise these things, and mentioned how their friend, etc was in New York and they hoped they were OK.
But two things struck me, which seem to reoccur with every "dramatic" event (and sadly it is the media which dictates what is dramatic and what is not).
1. The poor quality of the information available. At the start of 9/11 people were realistically saying 100-200 people could be dead. I mean, even thinking about it (albeit in retrospect) that even before the buildings collapsed you'd probably think more people than that would be on the planes.
With the 2004 Tsunami, similarly ludicrously low figures were bandied about. Possibly two thousand dead they said at first. As time went on it swelled to fifty times that (and beyond). With this case you could be more forgiving - most of the events took place in countries where development does not allow everyone to have mobile phones, or for media types to be ever present.
But with Thursday's incidents the same thing occurred. The BBC five hours after the initial events were still saying "two dead", despite the fact it was clear that more had perished than this (the picture of the bus was a particularly obvious sign of this). For the first couple of hours it wasn't obvious at all what was even going on. As is often the case, eye-witness reports and word-of-mouth substituted for the media's report.
And is always the case, one's thoughts turn to the people you know. I phoned a couple of people, e-mailed several more and was relieved to see most of my friends report in that they were OK. I didn't even consider that anyone might have been in trouble (our city is too large for that to be likely I suppose) but if nothing else the phone call is there to reassure the other person that you are thinking of them.
I work in Bromley out in Zone 5, way away from all of this, but even out in the suburbs we were affected, albeit in a minor fashion. I was giving a talk to our Chairman and Vice-Chairman of our board about something or other, and they both attempted to contact their family members who worked in the City. The mobile phone network was down (or so it seemed) possibly for security reasons or possibly because it was overloaded with so many calls. No-one really knew.
2. That no-one knows what to say. To an extent, there is nothing to say. One of my colleagues immediately said "I wish that had happened two days ago so we didn't get the Olympics". He wasn't being malicious, but it was still a stupid thing to say.
Others in my office said "Oh, it's probably the French because they're bitter!". I didn't know if they were joking. It didn't really matter, it was still idiotic. Now, I am not a particularly overly-sensitive person. It is not that I mind jokes about tragedies. As I have said elsewhere, anything is a legitimate source of humour. It just needs to be funny. And most people's comments fell way short. Fortunately some good humour did come out of this as I will come onto later.
But at Thursday lunch-time I happened to be in our common room where a television displayed Blair's speech. I hate listening to political speeches "live" because I find them uncomfortable. The problem with the un-nuanced view of politics is that it relies on very crude assumption about (for instance) the people in power and the nature of politics. So I was sitting with a good friend of mine who sneered and said "Pfft, what does he care about it?". I wanted to slap him.
This is not a defence of Tony Blair. I think he is a war criminal and if we were holding ourselves to the same standards to which we attempt to hold others he would be punished accordingly and would probably be executed or given a long prison sentence. But at the same time, I do not hold the illusion he is a somehow personally evil man. I do not imagine he idolises Ming the Merciless and plots the destruction of freedom loving people from atop Mount Doom. I'm sure if I met him I'd find him a reasonably pleasant man. My good friend T&F works in that area of government and confirms he is pleasant enough, or from what he's seen.
And indeed, during his speech (the content of which was unsurprising and was in-line with what was expected) the emotion which strained his William Shatner-esque eloquence was undoubtedly genuine. He probably was really shocked, shaken and appalled by what had happened. I'm willing to believe he was thinking about the people who were directly affected by all this. Could it be any other way? Do people think that the leaders are somehow wrong or evil?
Undoubtedly Mr Blair handled it much better than I could have. I mean, what would I say, if I was to address the nation after London, my city had been attacked?
"Fucking hell, this is terrible! Jesus, I mean we presumed something like this would happen, but fuck!"
or
"Well, we had it coming. I mean, we've been bombing Iraq for ages now. Did you not expect any come-back? Wake up people!"
I'm sure if someone from the Daily Mail or their ilk was to speak they could blame everything on asylum seekers and say we'll bomb the Arabs for this.
The point is that very little can be said. No-one knows how to act. What to say. It's unfair to me to be get annoyed at my colleagues stupidity, or my friends reaction. I was no better, I'm sure.
After 9/11 the reaction was even worse (as the scale was so dramatically worse). Crude anti-Americanism competed with blinding sentiment to see who could say the most ridiculously over the top things. People would say things like "the people who died had it coming" (including the working-class Bangladeshi immigrants who worked 60 hour working weeks in the restaurant on the 60th floor apparently) and then others would fantasise about America wiping Mecca off the map in a horrendous nuclear attack. Fortunately most people I knew or know aren't spastics, and so it was easy to avoid the rest of the world's hysteria.
But even the ones who weren't saying something hysterical I was struck by stupidity. One of my customers phoned in the day after 9/11 and we were discussing why users should always back-up their data. He suddenly said :
"I imagine that's one of the worst things about yesterday. Think of all the information they lost."
I was momentarily taken aback by his inanity and I think I mumbled something about off-site backups saving the day. I could have taken him to task regarding his woefully misplaced sense of priority, but would have it done any good?
Of course there is much more to be said, like the motivation of those that did this, and the possible fallout. But these things have been said more eloquently than I ever could. Read for instance the LSE's response here : http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/pressAn
Solidarity
The only other thing that I wanted to discuss is that old chestnut : solidarity. In a crisis, even a relatively minor one like this (in global terms), people do usually tend to look out for each other a little bit more in all sorts of ways. Trying to get up across London on Thursday evening the bus driver was letting people get on the bus without paying for instance. A minor but noteworthy gesture made to people trying to get home with a transport system that was, to say the least, a little disrupted.
Similarly, after getting hold of Hester I casually remarked (to no-one in particular) at work that my girlfriend was safe and sound. My colleagues were genuinely pleased. Which is natural enough of course but I don't think they even knew I had a girlfriend before then. It's horrible, but it often takes something nasty for people to be a little bit more human to each other.
Of course, this is personal solidarity for people that we know (even if only second hand) and is less unusual. But I am referring to a more general feeling of togetherness shared by all. But all who? All Londoners? There's eight million of us. I doubt you could find a single other thing that all Londoner's have in common except perhaps some proportion of our genome (like those idiotic comparisons people make with how much DNA we 'share' with other primates).
But this sort of "political" solidarity, to me is not just a general vague feeling inspired by people faking concern in your life for ten seconds one day a decade. It is a specific psychological and physiological response that I personally get (I cannot speak of others) and I presume influences my behaviour more widely than I consciously realised. The simplest way I can put this is, as I've done before : the tingling you get that runs down your spine when you're faced by certain (emotional) conditions. It's the like the shiver one can induce if one takes a shower on ecstasy.
I must confess I felt it more than once on Thursday. The problem is that it's a feeling that, to borrow one of Terry Pratchett's expressions, it can plugs straight into your spine and bypass your brain. It can be induced by things which aren't necessarily what you'd approve of.
So anyway as I read people's comments on forums and heard people in the office, I started to feel it. Reasonably quickly posts appeared saying that this wouldn't deter us from living OUR life and WE would not be shaken. More specifically people said how they were proud of London, and how typical this was of London being so damn resilient. At least one person in my office made the (inevitable) comparison to the Blitz and how that hadn't broken our spirit. Posts appeared in the form :
or
Now, this is not a criticism of anyone who expressed or shared this sentiment. Indeed, this is the sort of thing at least part of my brain loves to hear. Once I heard someone saluting the courage of the emergency services I felt the familiar shiver and warm very feint glow of pride. I immediately felt "solidarity" (or what I'm calling it) and almost wished I could be there, assisting my brothers (although of course in reality I would be a talentless lanky loser getting in everyone's way).
I think most would agree that feeling support (albeit slightly strange emotional support) for the emergency services is hardly a particularly bad thing, indeed it's encouraged by most observers and institutions through awards for bravery and so forth. One does not have to be particularly sentimental to see why the New York fire-fighters got a (deserved) truck load of respect after and during 9/11. But that kind of solidarity is almost universal. By saluting the NY Fire-Fighters we were saluting all fire-fighters and indeed everyone who risks their lives for others.
Similarly all of us can surely feel some degree of shared wonder at some poor bastard who somehow miraculously survives 4 days in rubble/debris after earthquakes and so on. But this wonder is not particular to this fellow or his race/nationality/occupation. It is an amazement at, if I can sound like a movie trailer for a moment, the human spirit and people's ability to survive in the most unlikely of conditions.
But solidarity can be particular. "We" can be all of humanity if we choose it, or our nation, our city, our street or just our family. We can feel attachment to anything we wish. Indeed, I was out walking with Hester when we came to a cross-roads as to which way to go to reach our destination. I gave my usual reply "This is your manor - your decide" (i.e. it's far from my home and near hers) but she replied that it wasn't. She felt no manor. No attachment to this street or that. The city in general was too vast to feel such a thing.
This shocked me somewhat. How could someone feel no attachment to where they lived? Sure, it's just pavement and roads and buildings once you get right down to it, but I always assumed it was a universal trait to be pointlessly enamoured with where one lived. I suppose not, when one considers global migration.
Anyway, the point is that feeling like you are a South Londoner, or a Londoner or anything specific, is probably in a sense, ridiculous. I don't even know the people in the next house, let alone the people in the next post-code. Once you get up to the level of nations or ethnic groups it becomes even more ludicrous to talk about any sort of collective identity, or shared sentiment.
But this doesn't stop the physical response from existing (and associated thought patterns) possibly evolved from tribal solidarity thousands of generations ago. And perhaps it's a good thing they do, but the point I'm making here is that they can be both incredibly dangerous and incredibly useful. It doesn't stop me feeling like a Londoner.
From a personal perspective, it seems that people like to think they're special. When you're a kid your mother might tell you that you were one in a million. That you were the most handsomest kid in school. Whatever really. It doesn't necessarily have to be anything formal or academic, it's just something which I tend to observe in people in all sorts of situations. In social circles people often (subconsciously or not) carve out a niche for themselves as "the one who likes maths", or "the one who is good at computer games" or "the one with an encyclopaedic knowledge of post-war Badminton champions" or whatever. It might not even be something positive, but it'll be some sort of unique characteristic that they'll often cling to (and emphasise). Hell, it could even be something incredibly stupid. You might know of someone who once ate 100 packets of Golden Wonder crisps in a day. If you do then there's a good chance when you bring this up the person responsible will grin with a strange look of pride on their face. I'm sure many of you will be familiar with this sort of behaviour.
It's not necessarily to correct think of group dynamics (or sociology / political orientation) as psychology scaled-up but it's illuminating if we explore this analogy for a moment. To recap, I don't know why but I feel like a Londoner. Like London is in some sense my home but not only that this whole idea is somehow (implicitly) stating that "we" are special in some sense.
It goes further than London of course. One resident of London (not from England originally) said that the quick response must have been because of the "British stiff upper lip". Well, possibly. Likewise I read an entire thread of jokes about the bombings only a couple of hours later. The most vocal contributors were Londoners. My favourite was :
michael howard has condemned the atrocity
saying it's killed half of the conservative voters in the city
Someone pointed out that this was an English way of dealing with things. We could make jokes in the face of tragedy - the implication that others couldn't. I don't know how true that is, and I suppose it doesn't matter, does it?
The point is that it can be very easy to fall into the "we're special" mindset as we seek to cope with such calamities. Is it a good idea to revel in a joint solidarity? After all, this sort of "exclusive attitude" is the sort of thing that can lead to rather unappealing politics in some. Fortunately I didn't see much of it on this occasion but I did read a couple of posts by people who wanted Muslims generally "to pay" and things like that. Those comments are not worth too much analysis but I'd imagine (or hope) they're not widely shared.
I suppose on balance, we should be glad to instinctively stick together. Even if it's using slightly silly categories the fact people are able to empathise with their fellow human being should fill us with some sort of hope. Perhaps this is exactly the sort of feeling we should be fostering. So long as it is tempered by rational, critical thinking surely it is exactly what humanity needs?
Anyway. Whether it was due to our London spirit, the British stiff upper lip, the professionalism of the emergency services, or the resilience of human nature in general London did seem to be back up and running quite quickly. The Northern Line's doors stayed still and silent at Kings Cross but aside from that my familiar journey home from Archway to the Elephant was the same as many others. There were glum looking commuters. There were young ladies wearing too much make-up and ghastly fashions. There was a beggar asking for money to get into a shelter that night.
Business as usual. Just as if nothing had happened.
Obviously this is a trite thing to say but I hope you and yours are safe and well.
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