Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse: And Other Lessons From Modern Life

by David Mitchell

  It’s easy for me to say, though. I’m not sacrificing anything. On the contrary, I’ll make a net sartorial gain when everyone else is dragged down to my got-dressed-from-a-skip-in-the-dark level. I don’t derive my sense of individualism from what I wear. Only if those who stand to lose financially or emotionally from a rejection of fashion altruistically adopt Starck’s approach will his remarks amount to anything more than a zeitgeisty rejection of the zeitgeist.

  Sacrificing our rights and freedoms, or the use of them, for the greater good is much called for these days. There’s pressure to recycle, pay higher taxes, not travel on planes, avoid products manufactured by enslaved children, stop borrowing money we can’t pay back, stop lending money to people who won’t pay it back, and abstain from tuna. And psychologically we couldn’t be worse prepared.

  For decades our society has trumpeted liberty and its use, choice, self-expression, global travel and all forms of spending as inalienable rights. But only as the environment and economy teeter are we gradually becoming aware that with the power such liberties give us comes the responsibility to deal with the consequences.

  What a horrific realisation. I hate it. I was perfectly happy living in my London flat, talking to my friends and ignoring my neighbours, earning my money, spending it on my stuff, going on my holidays, telling my accountant to minimise my tax liability, writing my opinions in my newspaper. And then suddenly, in all sorts of frightening ways, it becomes clear I’m living in a society.

  No wonder we kick against it. A national newspaper recently ran a campaign against wheelie bins called, without any irony that I can detect, “Not in My Front Yard”. Maybe, as a thin-lipped, judgmental liberal, I’m missing the self-knowing humour behind their selfish rage, but to me it seems that these NIMFYs are just railing against society’s attempts to restrain the disastrous exercise of their liberties.

  Councils issue wheelie bins to make collection and recycling more efficient and effective. They’re better than normal bins – they’ve got wheels and can be emptied mechanically. Because they’re bigger, they can be collected fortnightly. Because collections can be fortnightly, recycling collections can be slotted in without doubling the refuse budget. I’m sure the NIMFYs would hate me for saying this, which is why I’m doing it, but it’s good, simple, common sense. The bins might not look lovely, but there are more important considerations in play here.

  But any self-sacrifice feels to us westerners like tyranny. We’re not ready for it. Our evolution into apex individualists has superbly attuned us to injustices against us while atrophying our awareness of the vastly greater number that work in our favour. It’s not our fault, it’s just how we were raised.

  Our fear of being encroached upon has made us forget that there are few freedoms that can be fully exercised without impinging on someone else’s. The freedom to stab has long since been subordinated to the freedom not to be stabbed. But we still have the freedom not to recycle and to borrow or lend money recklessly, regardless of others’ freedom to live on a habitable planet and in a functional economy. We’ve hugely prioritised our rights over our duties because it’s only the former that tyrants try to take away.

  But it can make us ridiculous. Explaining why mid-terrace residents had no option but to keep unsightly wheelie bins in front of their houses, a Chester resident said: “Otherwise they would have to walk three bins all the way down the street, round the corner and into the backyard. Imagine doing that with three bins? It’s just crazy.”

  I can almost hear the Oxfam advert: “This is Andrea. Every week she has to walk three bins all the way down the street, round the corner and into the backyard. It’s either that or people will see her bins. It’s crazy, but you can help.”

  What’s crazy is that, in the face of environmental disaster, when councils are at last prioritising recycling in a way most scientists would describe as “much, much, much, much, much too slowly”, people are moaning about ugly bins rather than grasping a fairly simple opportunity to do their bit. So you have to keep the bins in front of your house? Well, keep the bins in front of your house then, you moaning bastard.

  *

  Only three days into 2010 and the analysis of 2009 was already well advanced …

  Susie Dent, dictionary cornerstone of Countdown’s revamped cathedral, has come up with her annual list of the new words that have entered common usage. Compiled for the Oxford English Dictionary, it provides an excellent opportunity to reinforce the conclusions we’ve already come to about the year that’s just finished.

  2009, 12 months of being broke and online, has thrown up exactly the kind of new term you’d expect: “staycation”, “tweetup”, “bossnapping” and “unfriend” are all set to lose their red wavy underlining in the Microsoft Words (or should that be Microsofts Word?) of Christmas Yet to Come. I’m only surprised that “duck island” hasn’t entered the language as a new expression for a hysterical-consensus-inducing irrelevance. Maybe people are still using “Sachsgate”.

  I get uncomfortable around these heartwarming celebrations of words. It smacks of the view that some words, almost in isolation from their meaning, are fun and interesting because they roll round the tongue or have lots of syllables. “Ooh, ‘perforation’, that’s a good word, isn’t it?” “I do love the word ‘drizzle’ – it really makes you think of drizzle!” Does it? That may be because you speak English.

  It reminds me of teachers at school who, undoubtedly with the best motives, would criticise the use of words such as “nice” and “good” because they were boring. “Boring, are they? That’s rich, considering how tedious this whole schooling experience is proving,” I used to think as I glumly flicked through my mini-thesaurus. They’re not boring words, any more than potatoes and bread are boring foods. If you start describing everything as “rambunctious” or “celestial”, you end up with sentences like meals in expensive ethnic restaurants – all flavoursome sharing plates and no bloody chips. Slagging people off for saying “nice” and “good” is what leads to their resorting to “awesome”.

  There’s a lot of this nerdy wordiness about. Jaunty anthologies of archaic or quirky phrases are piled high around bookshop tills – the perfect gift for a diabetic, recovering-alcoholic cousin who you think can read. People collect words as decorative objects, like Victorian kitchenalia – attractive curios which they have no intention of using. In those standardised list-interviews beloved of newspapers at the moment (for understandable, labour-saving reasons), a common question, between “Have you ever said ‘I love you’ and not meant it?” and “When did you last bleed a radiator?” is: “What’s your favourite word?” It seems wilfully inane, taunting the interviewee to say “tumour” or “rape”.

  The most dispiriting new word to be coined in 2009 is, in my opinion, “simples”. It’s not a new expression for people with learning difficulties, but a line from a TV advert. In a way, I should be relieved to see any evidence of television’s continued cultural penetration, but instead I’m irritated.

  For those unaware of comparethemarket.com’s TV campaign, let me explain that it features a fictional website called comparethemeerkat.com, whose Russian-accented meerkat proprietor is supposedly disconcerted by the number of hits his site is getting from car insurance customers with no interest in his unspecified meerkat-based services. Presumably these surfers also have Russian accents and voice-activated web-browsers, as that’s the only way I can imagine the confusion arising. On a keyboard, it’s very unlikely that you’d mistype “market” as “meerkat”. “Makret” would be much more likely. But please don’t let me undermine this joyous piece of comic invention with my bleak logic.

  Anyway, at the end of his explanation of the confusion, the meerkat says “Simples!” to mean, I assume, “It’s simple”, and now people have started saying that in real life. It beats memorising cracker jokes, I suppose, and provides a wonderful opportunity for the advertising creatives involved to give each other some awards.

 
I think that’s what annoys me most about it. My experience of working in advertising – usually doing voiceovers – is that, while everyone’s keen on making the ads funny, they’re keener on selling something and, as my job has made me bitterly aware, it’s hard enough to be funny when that’s all you’re trying to be. Hence commercials that attempt humour rarely succeed, and it’s particularly galling for professional comedians when they do.

  To have achieved the double of both promoting their product and amusing people – albeit only people with a fair amount of parrot in their DNA who probably also pepper their conversation with “Should have gone to Specsavers!” and “I bet he drinks Carling Black Label!” – makes me boiling green with envious rage.

  The truth is that I instinctively resent novelty in language. I know it’s important and gives English its all-conquering strength – I’m not arguing for the approach taken with French, which has been as weakened in the name of its purity as a home-schooled child. But when language changes, slang becomes correct, mispunctuation is overlooked and American spellings adopted, I feel that I’m a mug for having learned all the old rules to start with. If those who misuse the apostrophe are not adversely judged for it, then why did I waste so much time listening in class?

  I realise that’s not the most persuasive way of expressing the stickler’s point of view. I should have said that correctness in language is vital to avoid unintentional ambiguity. But it usually isn’t. No one ever accidentally bought more potatoes than planned because they were told to buy less rather than fewer. Of all the times I’ve typed “Hopefully see you then” in an email, no one has ever subsequently complained that, when they saw me, I didn’t seem hopeful. We sticklers say we fear confusion of meaning, but it’s the feeling that we’ve learned and obeyed a set of rules that doesn’t matter that really spooks us.

  In the end, though, the rules do matter; it’s just that obeying them doesn’t. They need to be there to create a tension between conservatism and innovation. If the innovation continued unchecked, unmonitored by Susie Dent, then the language would fragment into thousands of mutually incomprehensible dialects. The stickler-advocated rules of spelling, grammar and punctuation slow the speed of change and allow the language to remain united. They’re as important to the continued strength of English as the internet’s power to coin new usages. I only wish that were the real reason I cling to them.

  *

  Michael Gove has made a startling attempt, in advance of the centenary of the outbreak of the first world war, to redefine the conclusions the nation has painstakingly come to about the conflict. After glancingly conceding that “the war was, of course, an unspeakable tragedy”, he went on to dispute many of the ways in which it has conventionally been deemed tragic.

  He condemned the widely held view that the prosecution of the war was “a series of catastrophic mistakes perpetrated by an out-of-touch elite” as the misrepresentation and myth-making of “dramas such as Oh! What a Lovely War, The Monocled Mutineer and Blackadder” and “left-wing academics” such as Sir Richard Evans, regius professor of history at Cambridge. In fact, he denounced Sir Richard’s views as “more reflective of the attitude of an undergraduate cynic playing to the gallery in a Cambridge Footlights revue rather than a sober academic contributing to a proper historical debate”. A dismissive comparison indeed coming from a man who thinks Blackadder is a drama.

  Evans himself, Tony Robinson from Blackadder and Tristram Hunt from Labour all returned fire, and even Margaret Macmillan, a historian praised by Gove, responded coolly, saying: “You take your fans where you get them, I guess … but he is mistaking myths for rival interpretations of history.” Meanwhile, a fellow Tory member of the government said that “Michael should get back in his box”.

  Gove’s arguments are all over the place. He makes a reasonable case for Britain’s decision to go to war being an acceptable response to German aggression, but establishing the justness of the war is hardly a refutation of those who claim it was incompetently waged. His only response to them is to cite the “new light” that Professor Gary Sheffield of Wolverhampton University has cast on Field Marshal Haig, revealing him to be “a patriotic leader grappling honestly with the new complexities of industrial warfare” – as I recall, it wasn’t Haig’s patriotism or honesty that was the problem – and the fact that military historian William Philpott has “recast [the Battle of the Somme] as a precursor of allied victory”. Well, it’s certainly a precursor in the sense that it happened first.

  But Gove’s main point – and he’s far too intelligent not to know that it’s just naked trouble-making – is that the lefties who question Britain’s conduct display “an unhappy compulsion … to denigrate virtues such as patriotism, honour and courage”. So, by criticising the British generals, you do down the private soldiers. By emphasising the uncontrollable slaughter, you deride honour and courage. That’s the “ambiguous attitude to this country” displayed by Blackadder Goes Forth, he’s saying. Those pinkos at the BBC have ruined everything again, turning glorious and honourable victory into snide and spiteful disparagement of righteous authority. So argues our secretary of state for education. To hear him, you’d think the Germans had won.

  Fortunately, Gove’s senior aides are working on a remake of Blackadder that is more respectful to his take on what he calls “our nation’s story”.

  A British first world war dugout, July 1918. Captain Goveadder enters. Private Baldrick is cowering under a bunk bed.

  Goveadder What are you doing under there, Baldrick?

  Baldrick Taking comfort from the fact that this is a just war, sir.

  Goveadder I hope the discordant note of irony I thought I detected in that remark was merely an illusion brought about by the constant shellfire.

  Baldrick Oh yes, sir! Anyway, I have a cunning plan to avoid dying in this war.

  Goveadder Oh dear, Baldrick, why would you want that? What an unhappy compulsion you have to denigrate patriotism, honour and courage. I sense you’re a Labour voter.

  Baldrick The franchise has yet to be extended to the likes of me, sir.

  Goveadder I didn’t know you were a woman!

  Baldrick I’m not, sir. Many working-class men still don’t have the vote, which is why this war is such a splendid and rare opportunity, not yet afforded in the ballot box, for us lot to root for the western liberal order.

  Goveadder Careful, private!

  Baldrick Stop reading irony into things, sir! And you still haven’t heard my cunning survival plan.

  Goveadder Go on then, and you’d better make it establishmentarian.

  Baldrick It’s to obey the generals’ orders and all will be well because they know best, sir.

  General Melchett enters.

  Goveadder Speak of the devil.

  Melchett At every christening! Quite right, Goveadder. Make the godparents denounce him and all his works, that’s what I say. We’re a God-fearing lot, we British. Just look at our island story – God-fearing for centuries till the lefties briefly ruined it. Such a shame.

  Goveadder Damn those future lefties, sir. It’s almost enough to make you hope we lose the war so they won’t be able to abuse the freedom and democracy we’re all definitely consciously fighting for.

  Baldrick That’s certainly what I’m definitely consciously fighting for! And to suggest otherwise is exactly the same as saying it’s funny and trivial that I’ll probably die.

  Melchett Unlike the Germans – they’re definitely consciously fighting for expansionist militarism in the same vast numbers that we’re definitely consciously fighting for freedom and loveliness.

  Goveadder Never before in human history have ethical and national divides coincided so uncannily.

  Melchett Yes, it’s as unprecedented as the horrific industrialised nature of the seemingly endless slaughter we’re currently trapped in.

  Goveadder That sounds a bit cynical, sir. I never had you down as one of those Cambridge Footlights types.

&n
bsp; Melchett Oh yes! Back in the 90s, I made a great hit with a sketch questioning the beneficial effects of European colonisation of Africa, and another about a vicar who couldn’t stop breaking wind, both of which I’m incredibly ashamed of now, of course.

  Baldrick farts. They all laugh.

  Melchett Now, this regiment goes over the top tomorrow and there’s every chance you’ll both get shot. I’m sorry about that.

  Goveadder If so, sir, I’m sure any concerns I have that my colossal personal sacrifice has achieved nothing will be assuaged by the thought that future academics will re-evaluate this supposed “waste” as being a vital component of the western powers’ ultimate attritional victory.

  Baldrick Speaking for myself, I shall be thinking of our great ally, who’s as liberal as he is western, the tsar of Russia.

  Goveadder Should you not be thinking of our own king and emperor, George V, personification of near democracy?

  Baldrick I would do, sir, but he and the tsar look so alike, and I’ll have more in common with the tsar.

  Melchett Why’s that, private?

  Baldrick ’Cos he’s just got shot as well.