An Anguished Cry – Reflections On Black Mirror

Last night’s edition of Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror was one of the most powerful and thoroughly depressing things I have seen on television in a long while. Subtitled ’15 Million Merits’ it depicted a bleak future where humans peddled on exercise bikes – seemingly to no real purpose – to earn ‘merits’ which were then used to pay for things, mostly virtual things for they spent all the time they were not peddling cooped up in box rooms and forced to watch TV or play video games.

The only way out of this was the X-Factor, sorry, Hot Shot – a 15 million merit gamble promising a life free from the drudgery and virtual reality. Our hero, Bing, overhears new girl Abi singing and encourages her to enter, paying for her entry himself. The judges, however, while impressed with her voice, have no need of more singers. What they need are porn stars and Abi is essentially peer-pressured into agreeing to the judges terms – one of them suggesting that if she doesn’t, maybe she really does belong back on her exercise bike.

Naturally, Bing is fairly cut up about this and on seeing a trail for Abi’s upcoming porn debut smashes up his box room in a fit of guilt. Then he resolves to take his revenge, or so it seems. Having made his way onto the stage, he threatens suicide with a shard of glass from his smashed-up room and thus forces them to listen to his tirade against the futility of it all and the falseness of the things they are forced to watch. So naturally they sign him up and Bing gets to deliver his tirades in two half-hour slots every week, watched by some, but, it appears, not many. And he gets a penthouse, but no Abi, it seems.

The moral of this story is not particularly subtle. Indeed, it is laid on with an exceptionally large trowel – possibly one wielded by Goliath or similar – but it is perhaps worth thinking about. For those who read his columns and watch his shows, Brooker’s misanthropy and utter lack of faith in humanity and the modern world will come as absolutely no surprise. It is what he has made a living on, as Bing goes on to do at the end, and this just about encapsulated his theories on modern TV and the culture it has spawned.

First, the drive to be famous. For most, life is drudgery, the only path to a worthwhile life is to become famous through television, and it almost does not matter how. Sure, Abi wants to be a singer, but ends up getting famous through porn (anyone think of another Abi who got famous in a similar manner?). It certainly looks like she is reluctant, but it is made clear that many others would kill to be in her position – it is better than the bike. Of course, there is another angle which is fame as prostitution – once you are up on that stage, every detail of your life is wide open (perhaps literally in Abi’s case).

Second, the utter lack of sensitivity towards people on television from the viewing public. This has come up a number of times on Brooker’s shows – the idea that many consider it perfectly acceptable to mock or hound famous people just because they are famous. Abi is eventually forced into her fate by peer pressure, the virtual audience (each representing a real viewer in their box) chanting at her. It is clear that few if any of them really care about Abi as a person, they just want to be entertained by her, and if that means she has to degrade herself on TV, so be it.

And finally, there is Brooker’s own role in all this. Bing is clearly Brooker – angry at the world and given a podium because of it. But in gaining his podium, he is neutered. For half an hour he is free to say what he wants, to rail at the system, to mock the sheepish stupidity of the masses. The masses, or those that watch, nod and laugh in agreement (as most of us will have done at Brooker’s own stuff) and then go back to doing exactly what Bing/Brooker was complaining about. This is not so much Brooker’s apology for himself but a cry of rage that he is not taken seriously, that most of us find ourselves agreeing with him and then do nothing about it. This particular machine does not kill its enemies, it assimilates them.

If more proof were needed, just think how many times you have seen or heard people make these observations, whether people you know personally or those in the media, within the very thing peddling the object of their ire. This is nothing new and the absolute believability of Bing’s fate somehow makes the whole thing more depressing than it already was. In Black Mirror there is no real life and fame and money are everything. It was so powerful, and so dispiriting, because rather than being some far-fetched futuristic world, it was all too recognisable as our own.

Perhaps Brooker, so far gone in his misanthropy, believes that nothing will ever change, that the media machine is simply too strong, or that we are too stupid. All I can say is that I do not wish to live in such a world, there is more to human existence than this and this must not only be understood, but acted upon. This is not the first time the deficiencies of celebrity culture have been pointed out, and it will not be the last. The real point behind all this, I feel, is that we are not listening. And until we do, Brooker’s misanthropic beliefs may prove tragically accurate.

Still, at least this week didn’t involve bestiality. A definite improvement.

Merton Tories, I Don’t Want Your Faux Sympathy

I have been taking anti-depressants for nine months and for the first half of this year was attending regular sessions at the Cambridge University Counselling Service. I want you to remember that as you read the following.

For a storm is brewing in the teacup of Merton local politics. On Saturday Baroness Warsi gave an interview to the Guardian in which she suggested that Labour should be asking why she was a Tory. In what was probably not the wittiest comment I’ve ever made, I posted the following on Twitter:

Warsi in the Guardian today thinks Labour should be asking why she’s a Tory. We already know, Sayeeda, it’s because you’re mental.

As I say, a not especially witty, throwaway, sub-late night stand up comedy joke, but the best I could come up with during a busy day. In a separate incident, Cllr Linda Kirby (Labour) of my local council posted the following two hours later:

Me too, she’s one sanctimonious bitch.

No mention of me or my tweet, and I don’t know what she was referring to. Maybe it was to my tweet, but she says not and she’s the best judge of these things, so I’ll go with her version.

So far, so not particular amusing tweeting. Then the local Tories got involved. Deciding that these tweets were definitely connected, and that describing Warsi as ‘mental’ was offensive to people with mental health problems (remember that first paragraph), Cllr Richard Hilton and Cllr Debbie Shears, Merton’s Tory leader, wrote to the leader of Merton Council to demand Kirby’s resignation. As the member in charge of adult social care and health, they argued, it was inappropriate for her to agree with my apparently offensive comment – not that there’s any evidence that that’s what actually happened.

There are many things I could say to this. I could, for instance, say that this is shallow political spin, taking two events that may or may not be connected, deciding unilaterally that they definitely are, and blowing everything out of proportion. Or, perhaps, I could say that this is exactly the sort of comment comedians make every night and, indeed, MPs make (see, for instance, the Tory MP for Stone, William Cash, who said on the 8th of November ‘That is the manner in which our system is run. It is completely mad.’) and that Cllr Hilton and Cllr Shears have probably made countless times themselves. I could even point to a story on the Merton Tory website from last April calling a Labour policy ‘crazy’. All synonyms for ‘mental’.

But I won’t do that. What I shall say, however, leaving the hypocrisy aside, is this.

It is utterly ridiculous for Cllr Shears to assert that mental health organisations would be outraged (and for Cllr Hilton to describe me as ‘outrageous’) and then to use this for cheap political point scoring. Mental health problems are a serious issue. I should know, I have one. But this posturing from Merton’s Tories is not only useless, it is also more than slightly offensive. Taking this non-event and using it to portray themselves as some sort of morally superior group who care deeply about mental health issues doesn’t show such deep care, what it shows is political opportunism at its worst. I think mental health organisations would be more outraged that their cause, their desire to limit the misery and suffering that these problems bring to countless people, is being used as a prop in the minor game of Civic Centre politics.

I don’t believe Merton’s Tories are all that serious about mental health. Trying to get help back in 2008 when they were in charge was a nightmare, and it doesn’t seem to have been on the agenda all that much. They only show an interest, it appears, when there is something for them to gain in their Civic Centre bubble, not even some battle to be won on the ground, in the real world where people’s lives will be materially improved.

What I said was not particular funny. But to demand the head of a hard-working public servant out of a desire for a political win rather than a deep-seated belief in the cause they claim to be arguing for is shocking in the extreme. It is not how politics should be done.

Rioting With Plato

‘It is only the thymotic man, the man of anger who is jealous of his own dignity and the dignity of his fellow citizens, the man who feels that his worth is constituted by something more than the complex set of desires that make up his physical existence – it is this man alone who is willing to walk in front of a tank or confront a line of soldiers.’ – Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man, 1992

‘They were nicking televisions because they wanted a television and they weren’t prepared to save up and get it like normal people.’ – David Cameron, 14th August 2011

We used to conceptualise the realm of politics as having a higher end. From Plato and Aristotle on, the city was seen a vital condition of living ‘the good life’ and satisfying man’s political and social needs. Then, in the seventeenth century, something changed. Hobbes and Locke reconceptualised civic society firstly as a simple matter of security, of escaping the ‘nasty, brutish and short’ life of man in the state of nature, and then as a way of securing and accumulating property. Ideas which have held sway ever since. However, it is perhaps only the last thirty years which have seen these ideas of the basis of society and, indeed, human nature, drawn to their logical conclusion, culminating in the response of the British political class to the riots which engulfed the country’s major cities in mid-August 2011 and particularly the response of the Conservative-led government.

It was, we were told, ‘criminality’, pure and simple.  People looted shops because they desired things and lacked the self-restraint to save up and pay for them like ‘normal people’. Even worse, presumably, were those who simply burned and vandalised – mindless feral thugs of ‘Broken Britain’ (a theme which seems to have vanished since May 2010), they lacked even their unrestrained desire as an excuse. The Prime Minister warned of ’100,000 deeply broken and troubled families…costing hundreds of millions of pounds for the country’. The barbarians were well within the gates and something had to be done about them. It was a very simple matter. Indeed, the Prime Minister criticised those who sought more complex causes, saying the only thing complicated about the riots was why there was ‘a sizeable minority of people prepared to do this.’

That modern politics is severely lacking in nuance is not exactly surprising, but the reaction to this particular event tells us a great deal about the mentality of our current politicians and its inadequacy for dealing with society. It is a mentality which revolves around money, where the key problem with these ’100,000′ families is the cost to the taxpayer. For these men and women of politics, as for an overwhelming number of others, it is money that matters. Overshadowed by Locke, Smith, Marx and, latterly, the employees of the IMF and the World Bank, man is seen as an economic creature, a consumer seeking to satisfy his desire for, say, a new television, and if he cannot afford it, then he will steal it. In the minds of these people, society is simply about accumulating goods and man is simply a bundle of material desires restrained, to a greater or lesser extent, by reason.

However, there is a serious flaw in the government’s thinking. If, as they claim, this was mere criminality, why did it flare up so suddenly? These 100,000 dysfunctional families of the Prime Minister’s imagination cannot have suddenly appeared from nowhere, springing from the ether to plunge the country into criminality. If it were really criminality, they would have been looting and burning for a long time now and these riots would have been nothing special. Indeed, the idea that the rioters were motivated solely by unrestrained greed entirely ignores the burning of buildings and the violence against the police which cannot simply be explained by the desire for a new television. No, something bigger lies behind this sudden outburst, something complicated (much though the Prime Minister craves simplicity). Rioting is a political act, motivated by another part of the human character, for man is not simply a collection of desires governed (or not) by reason. Man also has dignity.

Plato, in his division of the soul into three parts, called it ‘thymos’, usually translated as ‘spiritedness’, to go with reason and desire, although dignity is probably better, or perhaps self-esteem. It is that part of us which feels shame when we do not live up to our own standards, pride when we do and, crucially, anger when we are belittled. It is that part of us which drives us to stand in front of a tank or confront a line of soldiers or, indeed, riot police not for any material reason, but because we feel we have been wronged. This is the part of man which modern politics, and modern politicians, have forgotten, and we must remember it if we are to deal successfully with these riots.

It seems that the riots were triggered by the shooting of a man by police in Tottenham and disturbances at a subsequent protest. This was just the latest in a long line of police action which have undermined confidence in the force. It seems this was the last straw. It strikes me that this is a much better explanation of why people riot, as opposed to simply stealing. I am not, it should be stressed, arguing that every rioter was avenging wounds inflicted on his or others’ dignity by police – some certainly were using it as cover for simple crime and others may have been spurred by other political, ‘thymotic’ causes, but one cannot simply dismiss an entire riot as criminality.

But, with the elimination of ‘thymotic man’ from modern politics and the installation of the covetous ‘economic man’ in his place, out politicians are ill-equipped to understand and deal with the rioting. If one thinks people are driven only by desire and reason then, naturally, one would think the motivation of the rioters is a simple matter. However, man is more than that and, as such, things are much more complicated than the Prime Minister believes. We must reclaim ‘thymotic man’, driven by dignity as well as reason and desire, and add a little complexity to our understanding of human society. If we do not, we should not be surprised if more trouble is on the way – we must recognise that it is not a simple problem and there are no easy answers. After all, man is made up of something greater than the desire for a new television