Up is down.

I wrote this before the awful murder of David Amess, so have been sitting on it for a bit wondering if I’m being unreasonable. But watching some quarters attempt to use such a tragedy to supress genuine criticism of those (on both sides of the political divide) whose actions are leading to the enrichment of themselves and their donors and the ruination of so many other things made me think that actually, I’m not being unreasonable to expect a certain level of decency and care, and not for it to be okay for companies owned by overseas interests to dump raw sewage into our watercourses in the interests of their shareholders (yes, I know there's supposedly been a U-turn. We'll see.) So, I published it anyway:

Get back to work. Playtime’s over. Everyone knows that we’ve just been dossing off during the pandemic. Working from home? Give me a break. They worked from the office in the ‘40s with bombs raining down like explosive confetti (except, they didn’t; they very sensibly hid when the bombs actually fell). What do you mean the war wasn’t contagious? What’s that got to do with it? What do you mean they didn’t have home computers or wi-fi? Things have changed you say? Progress you say? Progress isn’t for the likes of you milado. Progress is the problem, it’s why you lot go around thinking you should be free to be who you feel you are. Get back in the boxes we’ve always put you in. Too many minorities these days.

Get back in the office. No you’re not going to be paid more. You should be grateful to spend your time and money on commuting, parking and lunch instead of doing your work from home. Unless you’re a woman. Then you can stay at home and do caring, cooking and housework. Like in the good old days. Care begins at home donchano, and with three-quarters of people on Carer’s Allowance being women, we can force women to do more of that at-home stuff they always used to. Win-win!

Never mind that the last couple of years has been such a strain on the wellbeing of the majority of the population; we pay lip service to your mental health and that should be enough. Anyway, the best thing for mental health is to work, work, work. Work unto death; it’s the future! Look; even the opposition agrees. When you felt mildly hopeful for the chance of a better world when you were younger, you were just being naïve. Childish. It’s time to grow up and get back to work.

Just look at me. Born rich. Inherited wealth. Funnelled into investments and offshore so I don’t ever have to pay fair taxes; to, shudder to think, contribute. That’s for you to do. Work and pay tax. Not my fault you weren’t born rich. We’re all in this together you know. The same storm, that is, not the same boat. I’ve got a yacht.

At least you’ve got a boat. Or a dinghy. It’s more than some should have. Migrants? Shirkers. They don’t deserve a boat. Send the boats back. Not our fault if they drown – I promise you’ll face no legal consequences for letting people drown. If I had my way, I’d chuck you in the slammer for savin’ ‘em. Up is down, you know? Let Europe have them. Isn’t Europe safe enough? What do you mean most of them probably speak English as a second or third language and not other European languages, so it stands to reason they might feel more comfortable here? Don’t they know they speak English in Europe too? Even though it’s usually in a funny accent. Let Europe have them. Many European countries already take in loads more than we do? We don’t take our fair share of refugees? So what? We’re closed. Too many as it is. Of course, nobody to drive the lorries, or work in the hospitals, or pick the fruit. Still, good to know we’ve taken back control of all that rotten fruit eh? Makes you all misty eyed to see all that control of failing supply chains, and those farming and fishing industries that have been decimated. At least they’ve been decimated on our terms, yeah? Makes you feel proper patriotic it does.

Anyway, get back to work. Up is down. Wrong is right. Freedom is slavery, and the future of humanity, to borrow from Mr Orwell, is a boot stamping on a human face forever. ‘Cos I’m the boot and you’re the face, so I’ll never let you get even.

Occasional feature: Ending with a song loosely related to the post (or more like a lyric I can take out of context and loosely relate to the post):

Arcade Fire: My Body is a Cage – “I’m living in an age, that calls darkness light.”

Control of what, exactly?

Since Article 50 will be likely triggered any time now, with no plan beyond demanding the impossible, pointless aggressive posturing, the failure of which is being blamed on the negativity of those of us who are, correctly, saying that what the plan wants to accomplish is blatantly impossible, I’m still wondering what it is we’re actually going to be taking control of. Straight bananas? Seems to me that the loss of workers’ rights, the Good Friday Agreement, higher standards of food and environmental protections, millions and millions of pounds in investment in infrastructure and a place at the table of a coalition of countries with a vested interest in peace is a high price to pay for straighter bananas.

I suppose there are our arms sales to consider. As Saudi Arabia is bombing Yemen with bombs built by us and sold to them, it is possible that the EU might have stepped in and told us that, you know, selling bombs to nations that are dropping them on schools, villages and other targets full of innocent people isn’t something a supposedly advanced nation should really be doing. But hey, guess what? If we split from the EU we can keep on selling! Death to Yemen school children if it means profit for us, right? Is that what taking back control means?

Trump-mania in the US is also cause (apparently) for Farage & co to celebrate. I mean, climate change? The single biggest threat to our species? Well, putting a collection of people who will happily tell everyone it doesn’t exist in charge is a great way of forgetting all about it…until it’s too late to stop Florida going underwater, that is. Resources are getting scarcer. There are occasional shortages of food, that, at the moment, are still cause for joking around – there’s a shortage of Iceberg lettuce, isn’t that funny! It’s going to get worse, you know. While the reasons may have been a mere coincidence of unfortunate weather conditions, what effect do you think climate change has on the weather? More uncertainty, more freakish coincidences. More shortages, for longer until, inconceivable as it is right now, you and your children may actually be in danger of going hungry. And what then? Will it still be funny?

It really is getting harder and harder to convince myself that within decades, war won’t engulf us all. Still, try making a suggestion that we need to make some large changes. For example, stop selling bombs and other arms to other countries, stop digging up carbon from underground and shitting it into the sky, work together with other countries instead of pretending we’re still an Empire that runs half the world (and causes untold suffering while doing it). Try that and you get told that you just don’t understand, your position is just childishness, lacking in understanding in how the world really works. No, I understand just fine. I understand that that those on top will commit and endorse any atrocity imaginable as long as they stay on top. I understand that they can go fuck themselves, and that there will always be a resistance. There will always be those of us that resist the idea that the only way to get on in life is to turn away from the suffering of others just to protect your own position and wealth.

Orwell’s vision of humanity’s future, of a boot stamping on a human face, forever, has not yet come to pass, and there are those of us who are still determined to jam a knife right through that fucking boot.

New occasional feature: Ending with a song relating to the post:

Jeff Buckley: Eternal Life. “While all these ugly gentlemen play all their foolish games, there’s a flaming red horizon that screams our names.”

It’s like they knew somehow.

A few of the books I’ve read fairly recently have a few unsettling things in common. First off, not too long ago, I read George Orwell’s 1984. Published in 1949, it tells of a rigidly controlled society where to even think outside the accepted lines is to invite horrifying conditioning until your mind thinks the proper way. The population are told what to think, and the structure of society ensures the population think it, even when it flies in the face of all observable facts. Recorded history changes overnight and yet to call attention to this, to question what those with authority tell you is truth is simply not conceivable. It’s hard not to find echoes of Orwell’s totalitarian vision in the way newspapers will publish blatant untruths again and again because it backs their ideology, driven to recent ludicrous highs in the lead up to the election.

(Loosely related tangent: Russell Brand is a cock; we all know this. There is, however, no denying that the cock has become a bit of a figurehead for the disillusioned non-voting masses. So, appearing on Brand’s web show The Trews as Ed Miliband did, in an effort, however half-arsed, to at least try to engage with these people is surely worthy is it not? It seems not. The official Government line is that Brand, and therefore by extension, the large percentage of the population he is speaking for, is a joke. Way to show contempt for the people whose lives you’re supposed to be working to improve. The papers declared it to be the desperate move of a lunatic. Why is it such a terrible idea to try to talk to the apathetic non voters? I agree that they should vote, but apathy doesn’t justify the contempt the press has shown them, lumping them together as some kind of bad smell it’s impolite to even acknowledge. Of course, judging by the recent election results, the silent majority might well consist of mostly UKIP voters, so now here I am, quite out of character for me, kind of hoping they go back to being silent.)

Anyway, back to the point; prescient novels. It seems Orwell’s future is one increasingly within the realm of possibility with every passing year. I’ve mentioned before how one of my favourite films growing up was the 1960 adaptation of The Time Machine, but I hadn’t, until recently, read H. G. Wells’ original novel. Rach picked it up for me from one of our local libraries (I get a delicious thrill every time I remember I’m lucky enough to live in a place where ‘local library’ is plural, and now that where I live has gone blue for the first time in over a decade, I’m concerned that may not be the case for much longer). Published in 1895 and set in Victorian times, it follows a scientist, known in the narrative only as ‘The Time Traveller’ to the year 802,701 to discover what has become of Earth and humanity in the far future. It turns out the divide between the rich and poor in our society continued to grow and grow and grow. It’s incredible that even pre-1900 there was concern in society about the widening gap between the classes, and that over 100 years later, we’re still having trouble with that issue. Did I say incredible? I meant incredibly depressing. But hey, I suppose I’d better get used to things being incredibly depressing for a while.

Having conquered the need to struggle for anything, the upper classes have evolved into the Eloi; mindless children, spending the days frolicking, eating, fucking and, well, not much else. Certainly not thinking. Their language is hugely simplified and their attention span is practically non-existent. The Time Traveller contends that this shows that struggling and fighting for a better world is what has driven us to achieve so much throughout the years, and when we finally got what we had struggled for for so long, our drive, our intelligence, our will to improve and our creativity withered and died, no longer needed. Meanwhile, the working classes have retreated underground and evolved into pasty, light-fearing Morlocks, living in dark holes full of machinery and manufacturing. The relationship between those above ground and those below is no longer economic, for there is no longer the need for an economy. Nor is it master and slave. The Morlocks continue to manufacture clothes and shoes for the Eloi, but it is not to serve them, nor is it because they are still some beaten down underclass. For the Morlocks have become cattle farmers, and the Eloi their unthinking food source. The gap between rich and poor, between upper and working class, has been widening for some time and is already pretty sickening. Inexplicably, we seem happy for it to get worse. The 19th Century concerns expressed in The Time Machine seem more timely now than ever.

And then, I came to High Rise. I’d read some J. G. Ballard before; The Drowned World, The Wind From Nowhere, The Terminal Beach & The Drought were my first experiences of the British writer, which I picked up after raiding my father-in-law’s book shelf. When news broke that Ben Wheatley was adapting it and that it is widely known as Ballard’s best novel, I reached out to my local libraries again and picked up a copy. High Rise was published in 1975 and is set almost entirely within the concrete walls of a recently opened self-contained living apartment. 1000 apartments on 40 storeys, the building includes shopping malls, swimming pools, schools and anything else the occupants might need. The only reason to leave is to work.

It doesn’t take long for things to start going awry; able to shut themselves off from society completely, those living in the high-rise begin to alter their self-contained society into something more primal – physical class distinctions evolve, literally lower, middle and upper class, reflected in the floors they occupy – and, freed from the restrictions placed upon them by a civilised society, a different rule takes precedence, that of hunter/gatherer, of predator and prey.

The really uncomfortable thing about High Rise is the fact that the inhabitants of the building actually welcome this degeneration, like a long-tamed beast finally throwing off its shackles. There is a sensation of the people actually pushing things further and further deliberately, out of a need just to see how far it can actually go; they embrace the darkness eagerly. The thing about High Rise is that it is so disturbingly plausible, that while the apartment building offered the ideal environment for the events described, sometime it feels there is every possibility of pockets of civilisation going this way as a prelude to the whole of our society plunging purposefully and giddily down this path of de-evolution. The intent of our new Government to re-legalise foxhunting and stop Britain being subject to the Human Rights Act, maybe even to withdraw from Europe altogether, make it feel like our entire country is becoming a self-contained high rise of its own, and the feeling of the balance tipping, gently at first, then quicker and quicker towards oblivion that many of us currently have is evoked so strongly in the early chapters of Ballard’s novel it is dizzying, and not a little disconcerting.

Of course, things on the whole aren’t quite as depressing as all that. While it is really quite depressing that in the decades since these novels were written and published, it seems we’ve failed to progress at all, there is hope in that we don’t yet appear to have slipped any closer to the hellish visions dreamed up in them. We might yet find our way to a future civilisation more positive than those described in 1984, The Time Machine and High Rise. More like The Commonwealth described by Peter F. Hamilton. More Star Trek, less Mad Max. Here’s hoping.