Some Context
For me, writing poetry is a therapeutic act. It enables me to express ideas or imagine versions of myself that I would otherwise find difficult to explore.
When I wrote The Personal, I had been at Oxford for about a month and felt like I was becoming a new person. (In many ways, I am more comfortable in myself now than I was then; as a result, I am not writing much poetry.) The Personal enabled me to reconcile two versions of myself: - my former self at Westminster who was a thoughtful, introspective, hiphop-loving teen (and I guess hiphop was a key way of marking myself out as different and knowledgeable while still being credible); and the self I was becoming - much more sociable, outgoing, immersing myself in a range of different social groups.
I began to develop a classic English combination of traits - identifying myself as introverted, but presenting myself as extroverted (at least, I am much more extroverted in company than I normally am alone; whether other people see me as such, I don't know). A model figure of this type would be my dad, who said last week "A lot of people don't realise quite how introverted I am." Yet as a friend of his said last week, my dad has this strength of personality that enables him to create a world around him. With great cheer and warmth, my dad projects an aura of sociability and engages with a huge range of friends; yet if you watch him in company, you can sometimes observe him switching off in order to attend to his own thoughts. He turns inward with much discretion. This is a useful habit to acquire and I fully intend to master it myself.
Anyway, back to myself in November 2006, I was making friends with lots of girls. This created issues of desire. No one struck me clearly as someone with whom I shared a lot personally, and I only wanted to kiss someone with whom I shared a lot personally. So I felt stuck, and that's what laid the foundation for writing the poem.
An Introduction to the Poem
I was still making up my mind about issues of desire and sex. Modern media often tells young people that it's good to experiment with sex when you're at uni so that you can discover who and what you like. And we can all see the sense in that, even if it involves a shallow, almost consumerist attitude towards romantic engagement. Try before you buy!
But actually the shallowness caused me quiet disquiet; and it was a feeling I'm sure other people shared. So I decided to write a poem in which two voices offer their thoughts on issues of desire.
One voice is lonely, solipsistic. This voice selfishly regrets our dependency on other people; the 'I' views our dependency on others for sexual satisfaction as both a nuisance and an impediment to personal integrity.
The other voice is collective. This 'we' expresses more complex and mutual states of desires; yet 'we' has a curious lack of interest about who is desiring. It presents what I suppose is the extreme of the socially normative attitude towards sexuality - have sex with someone! Give in, it says - it's so good! Who cares who it's with? I've met quite a few girls who had sex for their first time to 'get it over and done with.' To me, that's so weird. I still can't get my head around it.
Now, here's a link to the poem: -
The Personal
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See the next blog for more on the poem.
Saturday 29 September 2012
Wednesday 19 September 2012
The Personal and the Collective 1: Collective behaviour and the ideal of individualism.
I have been thinking a lot about the relationship between the individual and the group. It played a pivotal part in the central ideological conflict of the twentieth century: between communism and capitalism. With the Fall of the Berlin Wall, many were drawn to the notion that capitalism had triumphed; or, at least, that welfare capitalism had triumphed. The relationship between the individual and the state seemed to have been resolved. Globalisation would crusade across the world, bringing the merits of liberal democracy with it.
The recession of the past half-decade has ruptured this narrative. The relationship between group structures (such as the state and media, the 'public' and businesses) and the individual is being reconfigured throughout Western societies as we speak.
Fortunately, we are unlikely to see a return to extreme collective ideologies of a kind that emerged in the twentieth century. Soviet Communism, Chinese socialism and others all demonstrated a certain logic:- in order to make sure people accept and enforce collective ideologies, collective ideals must be imposed from above; individual opinion must be brutally suppressed. Such systems could only be brought about with speed and authoritarian leadership, with the consequence that these 'collective' revolutions became acceptable only in countries where authoritarian structures were the norm. The leadership ended up replicating the authoritarian structures that preceded them in significant ways. (I acknowledge that I leave Nazism and Fascism out of the account, mostly for the lazy reason that it would be too difficult to accommodate them within this essay.)
Nonetheless I detect that the various publics of most European nation-states are becoming less enamoured with the celebration of individualism, almost as with a myth whose godhead is in decline. I must admit that I have never fully agreed with those who foster individualism as the be-all-and-end-all of our society. To me, 'rational economic man' has always seemed a bad fiction invented by a self-loving bunch of Platonic economists. Group behaviour plays too much of a role in who we are.
(In fact, a distrust of such abstract systematicity made me so passionate about political, economic and philosophical ideas that I decided I could not study PPE with a cool enough head, the subject I first applied to study at Oxford. Instead I applied for a subject which weighed the subjective and objective aspects of human experience as of equal importance - English Literature.)
In the States, it was a form of collective behaviour that allowed the sub-prime mortgage crisis to happen. Let's give some context. Anglo-Saxon governments are generally in favour of home ownership. Home ownership gives citizens a stake in society, encouraging them to save in order to pay the mortgage on their greatest asset and invest in their local institutions - schools, hospitals, police stations, courts, etc. That's one of the reasons why in the aftermath of WW2, the "GI Bill" provided a loan guarantee for purchasing a house to returning soldiers.
Some half a century later, Bill Clinton and then George W had this grand idea that if the Federal Government relaxed regulations around housing, more people would get homes - a great thing for less well-off US citizens. Unfortunately, while it was great thing in theory, the relaxation went too far - leaving way for mortage lenders, banks and credit rating agencies to sell mortgages to people who objectively would never be able to afford them. When enough mortgagors stopped paying off the debt, the commercial models of rational economic action on which these companies depended were exposed as flawed. They were over-optimistic and (it seems to me) in many cases supported by representations that were made carelessly or recklessly without regard to whether they were true or false (source: definition of fraudulent misrepresentation in the Misrepresentation Act 1967). It wasn't just employees of the companies who partook in this collective behaviour. The mortgagors themselves were also wishfully reckless in believing they could ever fulfill the terms of their mortgages. It was both greed and deception which made them ignore a realistic assessment of their prospects.
The past few years has seen economists in the press (e.g. FT/the Economist) submit a series of alternative models of economic theory that do involve collective behaviour. However I wonder if any system like the Efficient Market Hypothesis (which often assumed at the individual level 'rational economic man') will ever rear its ugly head again within my life time. Instead, I hope that, more and more, others will come to agree that individuals respond to a plethora of different systems, none of which can adequately explain human behaviour.
Rather it should be seen that capitalism works well only when it peacefully coincides with a range of value systems, made enforceable by institutions. These value systems include: a dynamic recognition of individual duties and responsibilities which people assume for the sake of obtaining benefits (this underpins the spirit of our legal system); a recognition of individual opinion (and of experience) even if we disagree with it (institutionalised by the media); an aversion to physical and psychological harm and damage (institutionalised by the police); a commitment to maximising the physical wellbeing of as many people in society as is economically sane to do so (medicine); etc etc. This short paean to our institutions (flawed as they are) only scratches the surface. Within every business and industry in our society, a nexus of different value systems coexists and is enforced. The inherent plurality of motivation within capitalism ought always to be acknowledged.
Our system functions well only so far as our collective behaviour is held in check by our individual behaviour, and our individual behaviour is held in check by our collective behaviour.
- - - - - - - - - - -
In contrast to my last version of this piece, I have so far been much less topical. The sub-prime mortgage crisis is now half a decade old, and has been superseded by many other problems.
In that post I focused on the scandals - the Leveson inquiry, the MP's expenses affair, the seemingly endless string of banking problems in the past couple years, the tax avoidance serialised by The Times as 'Secrets of the Tax Avoiders', a populace recalcitrant to modernising energy policy, regulation, etc. In each of these areas, a lax attitude to the spirit of the UK's institutionalised systems combined with individual selfishness led to a failure of responsibility by those in charge.
Don't get me wrong - I haven't assumed that level of responsibility in my life, and I cannot yet know the pressures of doing so. Furthermore, these actions appear in retrospect much worse than they appeared to the actors involved at the time. But the point is exactly that - when The Memory of Justice ebbs, individuals fail our society.
It seems to me that of all the transformations currently occurring in these institutions, the most striking is that in banking. As Gillian Tett pointed out a few days ago (http://tinyurl.com/a84vy5z), historical trends would suggest that the current shrinking of the banks, and of banking to a profession with salaries similar to other professions, may last for some decades now. Public opinion and state control seems to have turned firmly against the excess pumping out of credit that has occurred in recent decades. As the tide has turned, more and more problems with how banks have used their instruments of financial enforcement have been exposed: PPI, interest rate swap mis-selling, LIBOR, the London whale, Iranian sanctions, etc. I fervently hope this is a kind of cleansing. That, for instance, the rise in banking litigation will both preserve the banks (which after all provide a public good of enabling individuals and businesses to invest in a better future for themselves) and create a residue of memories which ensure bankers act with high standards hereafter.
There are some I know who have set up a 'grassroots' movement in banking called Move Your Money. It seems to me a healthy cause, aiming at the diversification of our banking system. However, having spoken to a couple of them, I am also aware that they do not understand the role of banking outside of retail banking - neither the other side of commercial banking - e.g. providing secured loans to businesses - or investment banking.
If their work makes UK society better, it will partially be because their ignorance allows them to be more passionate about their cause; and that ignorance will do good, not harm. There have been some similar movements in the past that have caused harm - such as the savings and loans crisis of the 1980s and 1990s. Our generation must not only learn from the mistakes made during our life times, but of the times that precede us as well.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Finally, I realise I have skirted around the issues of the Eurozone crisis - having honed in on individualism in the US and UK (the countries which most concern me). Of course, some may think - but you've left out all the disasters created by social democracy in Europe! Well, that's somewhat true. I have to admit ignorance of the issues that underpin, say, the collapse of the construction industry in Spain and Ireland.
And I have insufficient understanding of the differences between European country's political, legal, economic, media-driven and other institutions which have led to the grand discord so evident in the European polity today. People talk about the southern European states and the northern European states in this abstract way that brushes over the detail of the individuals who occupy those states. What is most sad is how politicians are using ignorance as a means of fostering their own causes, and thus damaging the long-term interests of the peoples whom they serve.
And at the same time, a federal Europe would require a kind of revolution; but they hope to do so without any movement to generate favour or fervour for a federal Europe. A new political system in which noone believes will fail. As Abraham Lincoln famously said, 'A house divided against itself cannot stand.'
The recession of the past half-decade has ruptured this narrative. The relationship between group structures (such as the state and media, the 'public' and businesses) and the individual is being reconfigured throughout Western societies as we speak.
Fortunately, we are unlikely to see a return to extreme collective ideologies of a kind that emerged in the twentieth century. Soviet Communism, Chinese socialism and others all demonstrated a certain logic:- in order to make sure people accept and enforce collective ideologies, collective ideals must be imposed from above; individual opinion must be brutally suppressed. Such systems could only be brought about with speed and authoritarian leadership, with the consequence that these 'collective' revolutions became acceptable only in countries where authoritarian structures were the norm. The leadership ended up replicating the authoritarian structures that preceded them in significant ways. (I acknowledge that I leave Nazism and Fascism out of the account, mostly for the lazy reason that it would be too difficult to accommodate them within this essay.)
Nonetheless I detect that the various publics of most European nation-states are becoming less enamoured with the celebration of individualism, almost as with a myth whose godhead is in decline. I must admit that I have never fully agreed with those who foster individualism as the be-all-and-end-all of our society. To me, 'rational economic man' has always seemed a bad fiction invented by a self-loving bunch of Platonic economists. Group behaviour plays too much of a role in who we are.
(In fact, a distrust of such abstract systematicity made me so passionate about political, economic and philosophical ideas that I decided I could not study PPE with a cool enough head, the subject I first applied to study at Oxford. Instead I applied for a subject which weighed the subjective and objective aspects of human experience as of equal importance - English Literature.)
In the States, it was a form of collective behaviour that allowed the sub-prime mortgage crisis to happen. Let's give some context. Anglo-Saxon governments are generally in favour of home ownership. Home ownership gives citizens a stake in society, encouraging them to save in order to pay the mortgage on their greatest asset and invest in their local institutions - schools, hospitals, police stations, courts, etc. That's one of the reasons why in the aftermath of WW2, the "GI Bill" provided a loan guarantee for purchasing a house to returning soldiers.
Some half a century later, Bill Clinton and then George W had this grand idea that if the Federal Government relaxed regulations around housing, more people would get homes - a great thing for less well-off US citizens. Unfortunately, while it was great thing in theory, the relaxation went too far - leaving way for mortage lenders, banks and credit rating agencies to sell mortgages to people who objectively would never be able to afford them. When enough mortgagors stopped paying off the debt, the commercial models of rational economic action on which these companies depended were exposed as flawed. They were over-optimistic and (it seems to me) in many cases supported by representations that were made carelessly or recklessly without regard to whether they were true or false (source: definition of fraudulent misrepresentation in the Misrepresentation Act 1967). It wasn't just employees of the companies who partook in this collective behaviour. The mortgagors themselves were also wishfully reckless in believing they could ever fulfill the terms of their mortgages. It was both greed and deception which made them ignore a realistic assessment of their prospects.
The past few years has seen economists in the press (e.g. FT/the Economist) submit a series of alternative models of economic theory that do involve collective behaviour. However I wonder if any system like the Efficient Market Hypothesis (which often assumed at the individual level 'rational economic man') will ever rear its ugly head again within my life time. Instead, I hope that, more and more, others will come to agree that individuals respond to a plethora of different systems, none of which can adequately explain human behaviour.
Rather it should be seen that capitalism works well only when it peacefully coincides with a range of value systems, made enforceable by institutions. These value systems include: a dynamic recognition of individual duties and responsibilities which people assume for the sake of obtaining benefits (this underpins the spirit of our legal system); a recognition of individual opinion (and of experience) even if we disagree with it (institutionalised by the media); an aversion to physical and psychological harm and damage (institutionalised by the police); a commitment to maximising the physical wellbeing of as many people in society as is economically sane to do so (medicine); etc etc. This short paean to our institutions (flawed as they are) only scratches the surface. Within every business and industry in our society, a nexus of different value systems coexists and is enforced. The inherent plurality of motivation within capitalism ought always to be acknowledged.
Our system functions well only so far as our collective behaviour is held in check by our individual behaviour, and our individual behaviour is held in check by our collective behaviour.
- - - - - - - - - - -
In contrast to my last version of this piece, I have so far been much less topical. The sub-prime mortgage crisis is now half a decade old, and has been superseded by many other problems.
In that post I focused on the scandals - the Leveson inquiry, the MP's expenses affair, the seemingly endless string of banking problems in the past couple years, the tax avoidance serialised by The Times as 'Secrets of the Tax Avoiders', a populace recalcitrant to modernising energy policy, regulation, etc. In each of these areas, a lax attitude to the spirit of the UK's institutionalised systems combined with individual selfishness led to a failure of responsibility by those in charge.
Don't get me wrong - I haven't assumed that level of responsibility in my life, and I cannot yet know the pressures of doing so. Furthermore, these actions appear in retrospect much worse than they appeared to the actors involved at the time. But the point is exactly that - when The Memory of Justice ebbs, individuals fail our society.
It seems to me that of all the transformations currently occurring in these institutions, the most striking is that in banking. As Gillian Tett pointed out a few days ago (http://tinyurl.com/a84vy5z), historical trends would suggest that the current shrinking of the banks, and of banking to a profession with salaries similar to other professions, may last for some decades now. Public opinion and state control seems to have turned firmly against the excess pumping out of credit that has occurred in recent decades. As the tide has turned, more and more problems with how banks have used their instruments of financial enforcement have been exposed: PPI, interest rate swap mis-selling, LIBOR, the London whale, Iranian sanctions, etc. I fervently hope this is a kind of cleansing. That, for instance, the rise in banking litigation will both preserve the banks (which after all provide a public good of enabling individuals and businesses to invest in a better future for themselves) and create a residue of memories which ensure bankers act with high standards hereafter.
There are some I know who have set up a 'grassroots' movement in banking called Move Your Money. It seems to me a healthy cause, aiming at the diversification of our banking system. However, having spoken to a couple of them, I am also aware that they do not understand the role of banking outside of retail banking - neither the other side of commercial banking - e.g. providing secured loans to businesses - or investment banking.
If their work makes UK society better, it will partially be because their ignorance allows them to be more passionate about their cause; and that ignorance will do good, not harm. There have been some similar movements in the past that have caused harm - such as the savings and loans crisis of the 1980s and 1990s. Our generation must not only learn from the mistakes made during our life times, but of the times that precede us as well.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Finally, I realise I have skirted around the issues of the Eurozone crisis - having honed in on individualism in the US and UK (the countries which most concern me). Of course, some may think - but you've left out all the disasters created by social democracy in Europe! Well, that's somewhat true. I have to admit ignorance of the issues that underpin, say, the collapse of the construction industry in Spain and Ireland.
And I have insufficient understanding of the differences between European country's political, legal, economic, media-driven and other institutions which have led to the grand discord so evident in the European polity today. People talk about the southern European states and the northern European states in this abstract way that brushes over the detail of the individuals who occupy those states. What is most sad is how politicians are using ignorance as a means of fostering their own causes, and thus damaging the long-term interests of the peoples whom they serve.
And at the same time, a federal Europe would require a kind of revolution; but they hope to do so without any movement to generate favour or fervour for a federal Europe. A new political system in which noone believes will fail. As Abraham Lincoln famously said, 'A house divided against itself cannot stand.'
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