Walking whilst ill

I am still reading through Arendt’s ‘The Origins of Totalitarianism’. She is interesting about universal human rights, suggesting that since they are not enforceable because they are too abstract – the right to happiness might be a good example – there is no legal system that recognizes our essential humanity as such because it is so ill-defined. She prefers much more concrete rights such as the right to a home and protections from a national polity. If we lose our home, and the right to legal protections from our national governments, such as those who become refugees, we lose the opportunities to act politically or have an opinion. Refugees can not be sent to some uncivilized other place because the whole world is divided into nations which exclude outsiders to maintain their borders. The saddest aspect of this is that these people are innocent. They are outsiders because of the actions of others – such as warlords and imperialists.

Another reason for the movement of populations, is climate change and the failure of harvests. People facing starvation are forced northwards. They are not welcomed by nation states, worried about being overwhelmed by minorities and they face the rule of police and border forces rather than parliamentarians, representing individuals with a home and the right birth origin. Arendt points out that a criminal has more rights than a migrant, as he/she is in a legal system that upholds basic rights.

Migration is set to increase. Where do universal human rights fit in? They do not seem to be enforceable and are too abstract to be useful. Do shifting populations presage the ending of the nation state? How do we include these innocents into our societies?

I read a book recently that made the distinction between capitalism that added value and that which extracted it. The former might be characterised by entrepreneurial types that we can all approve of, doing their best to increase the wealth of the nation, and the latter are identified as hedge fund managers, bankers, landlords and profiteers, who move money round rather than create it – which are increasingly at the end of popular criticism (Mazzucato ‘The Value of Everything’)

I am currently reading Hannah Arendt’s book ‘The Origins of Totalitarianism’. She describes the rise of antisemitism and suggests that wealthy who have power are not threatened if they are perceived to be useful – entrepreneurs may be above criticism, but those with asset wealth, without obvious power, political or social, come in for much more criticism – perhaps the recent calls to ‘tax the rich’ addresses this group. Although lobbying activities might disguise their influence.

Wealthy Jews in the nineteenth century were content to be international deal makers and bankers and failed to develop a political presence to counter negative stereotypes. They also isolated themselves from their own wider community but at the same time they did not fit in with European aristocracies, so they retreated into their families. Can we say the same for the Russian oligarchs today – split off from their country and living a rootless, global existence? Have they made themselves a popular target for sanctions and displeasure? You can also see their vulnerabilities around Putin who has a tendency to put people in jail.

Arendt also discusses Imperialism, defined as the economic colonialism of the rising bourgeoisie, the business owning classes, in the eighteenth century, which sought to expand their wealth abroad when expansion nationally became exhausted. This expansion into other countries was thought to solve the problem of over-saving. Yet the profits from imperialism tended to go back into savings accounts, and were not redistributed to the poor at home or abroad, but accumulated wealth for the middle classes. She worries that international business networks will destroy the nation state which is small enough for democracy to be possible and recognizes the rights of the individual, and bring about world, i.e. totalitarian, government. Businessmen and the aristocracy (the asset rich) have never been fans of the republican call for ‘liberty, equality and fraternity’. Destruction of national democracies hasn’t happened yet but are our polities going that way?

I can’t help but think of the current leadership contest of the Tory Party. It seems that our new PM will be voted in by a small minority of the bourgeoisie, asset rich but mostly retired i.e. unproductive savers, keen to maintain their quality of life and pitiless in the face of great reported hardship. It does not feel very democratic – I don’t get a say, for example. Although neither candidate is very attractive.

Another growing critique is that of international corporations and their poor record of paying tax, often through the wheeze of moving their money around to more favourable tax regimes. Since most of the innovations of modern industry, including pharmaceuticals and information technology, have been seed funded by governments (Mazzucato) why doesn’t the taxpayer get some kind of dividend, much in the same way a shareholder does?

The relationship between business and politics is a fraught one. The use of court Jews by European princes to do trade deals across national borders, led to the rise of the Jewish bankers, such as Rothschild, but it also contributed to antisemitic conspiracy theories which finally led to the Holocaust. Nowadays, corporations have become more savvy and milk the state, foolish enough to sell public utilities for a quick profit and little return. But these sell offs are mostly hidden until lack of investment and management incompetency reveals itself in a crisis such as in the case of the UK water companies and the ongoing drought. Who knew that our water is controlled by foreign investors and hedge funds – as much of the privatised public sector is.

So the race is on. Democracy or totalitarian world government? What would you put your money on?

I read a fascinating research article (Rigby et al. 2021) recently in the open access journal PLOS One (find it on google scholar) that attempted to explain the differential success, in terms of death rates, between governments in managing the pandemic by analysing data from population statistics. The focus was on Western Europe – but they considered 42 countries in all. I was surprised, along with the authors, how much electoral procedures – proportional representation versus first past the post – affected the outcomes of the pandemic.

Those governments working within coalitions, often the outcome of proportional representation, had to seek consensus to keep everything together. These coalitions had more success in containing the virus, whereas governments elected in countries with the first past the post system could act with impunity only considering the next election as important. Perhaps the slowness of our Tory government to lock down was, in part, due to the fact that the crisis was at the beginning of their term, so they might have gambled on the idea that come the next election, voters would have forgotten their negligence.

Women leaders were more successful at encouraging populations to adopt measures that limited freedoms, and so restricting the spread of the virus. The authors speculated that this might be down to some female leaders being able to express greater empathy. I wonder if women are more careful since the notion of care is very much part of the socialisation of women and expectations that they will ‘care’ for children and the elderly. So to be ‘full of care’ might be a more convincing message coming from a woman.

The other major finding was that countries with a greater proportion of graduates faired better than those with fewer citizens experiencing tertiary education. The researchers suggested that the more educated populations were able to criticise the government, understand the evidence and be more demanding about evidence.

These factors accounted for more of the differences between the countries in reducing the number of deaths per million, than the more expected variants such as the structures of health systems, the number of health care staff, material poverty and GDP.

I notice the number of stand ups on TV is proliferating. They have become the new intellectuals. Is making something as serious as politics funny, OK? Do their routines feed our cynicism? Sometimes, I need the release of a good laugh at our ludicrous leaders and comedians fulfill that need. I think behind the banter is a great deal of anger – as in my own bitter laughter.

But beyond catharsis, is it helpful? Are they crowding out more difficult and more useful comment? Has this cynicism, helped to create an un-serious politics? I noticed on the last series of the Frankie Boyle vehicle, the New World Order which is very pointedly political, the relief I felt when George Monbiot talked seriously about fossil fuels. He was listened to in respectful silence. The studio crowd clapped him and some whooped in appreciation but nobody laughed. It is, after all, no laughing matter.

Where are the really good public intellectuals? Have they disappeared into podcasts? ( I listen to some, but mostly I feel sleepy – I do like a few moving pictures). Public intellectuals can learn from comedians who make juxtapositions for comedic affect whilst I think experts are too teacher-y for angry, informed adults. I find David Attenborough’s films incredibly boring and much prefer programmes about vets and their relationships with animals, owners and farming communities. I think it is the relations between animals and humans that I find compelling rather than a series of facts about animals and plants. Similarly, history programmes that drone on about kings and queens are very dull whereas programmes of social history are more entertaining for me and often polemical – anything with David Olusoga would foot that bill. I do like to watch documentaries which have an argument. I think that some comedians do bring an argument to their satire, but I want some interesting ideas too not just jokes. Rarely does comedy make me think.

I don’t think we should leave political comment to the comedians. There is so much discussion about new economics, climate change, democracy and governance amongst other things, on social media, on radio 4 and in books. The crises of this new century is changing thought but looking at the TV you would not know this because you would be laughing along with the comedians in what passes for political analysis.

1. As social scientists, why do we study the poor and not the rich?  What do we mean by affluence? 

In our concern for the poor, we tend to study those populations in deficit but do not make connections between them and the affluent who often create poverty by engineering scarcity to secure profits.   So they are intimately connected to poverty – extracting value from the economy (the renter capitalists) and impoverishing those that create wealth (the productive capitalists).  In this era of financialization, wealth is redistributed among the rich, rather than created through production.    By ignoring the affluent, are we implying that poverty is the ‘fault’ of the poor?  Do the affluent disappear from our calculations?  Surely, they need to be more central.

2. What are we doing when we describe inequalities through categories?  does this effort add to inequality as it strips out the moral and social context?  Are cross sectional snapshots sufficient? 

Does the effort of splitting the population into smaller and smaller groups fragment society and make it more difficult to tackle inequalities, by emphasizing difference rather than common cause?  Cross sectional snapshots inevitably iron out the moral, social and historical context.  In doing that, do we ignore important arguments for the redistribution of wealth, stolen from earlier generations, such as reparations for slavery? In our research, do we need to explore the opportunities for common cause? 

3. What is the role of history or accumulations of wealth in our considerations of inequality?  

Savage (2021) argues, quite persuasively, I think, that the inherited accumulation of wealth has a deadening effect on our society, as those at the bottom of the pile understand that the playing field is not level and they have no hope of ‘winning’.  They decide not to compete as they will always lose.  Accumulated wealth acts to make society more prone to entropy, where new voices with different perspectives and ideas cannot enter the field.  The Conservative Party leadership race is a really good illustration of this.  The constant harking back to Thatcher and ignoring evidence of the harmful effects of some of her policies, not least the de-regulation of the banking sector, shows a political class fresh out of ideas. 

Savage, M (2021) ‘The Return of Inequality: Social change and the weight of the past’ Harvard University Press. London, England.

I was discussing the notion of rationing with a colleague the other day in the context of placing limits on capitalist consumption. The hosepipe ban imposed on us by the Water Companies in the South East reminded us of rationing due to the droughts arising from the global warming of climate change.

Rationing is a reminder of war years and scarcity. I am reading a book by Jason Hickel ‘Less is More’ at the moment, who has written alarmingly about how capitalism is extracting profit from a depleting planet. He emphasizes that capitalism is an economic system that creates scarcity. I often forget this when the conversation is about growth which suggests abundance. The capitalists who big up consumption and growth as the road to happiness resist the notion of limits, except those they produce. We have had a period of limitation during Covid, where we were limited socially and confined to our homes. This was definitely not popular to most. In future, we may need to limit our travel, not a popular suggestion in this holiday season.

But think of the rationing that is doled out to the workers and their families, by the fossil fuel industries. By the corporations and the public sector, that ration our days of ease to a couple days a week and a few weeks holiday a year, when research has shown it is perfectly possible to maintain productivity working 4 days a week.

So green limits? At the start of Covid, both of us thought that fewer cars and airplanes improved the air and noise quality of our streets. We agreed that our quality of life got a bit better. My brother said, at the start of Covid, he quite liked walking around the empty streets of Covent Garden, where he works. I tend to cheer when I hear of the difficulties of air travel companies.

Food rationing seems more and more likely. Food banks are perhaps an early pre-curser to widespread use of defacto rationing where the financialization of the economy has extracted so much profit that wages are no longer adequate to cover the basics of food. According to Hickel, starvation was very much part of the playbook of early capitalists to force peasants to accept poor working conditions as they enclosed the common land.

Is it the word rationing? Does it suggest hardship and lack? A war footing, perhaps, with overtones of fear and solidarity.

I have been working on a piece of research that looks into help seeking by women experiencing domestic violence. Who do they turn to when they ask for help? Often it is members of their family, friends or neighbours. Help seeking is a tricky thing to do in circumstances that risk violent repercussions and can elicit little sympathy from supporters who expect the woman to leave at the first sign of violence, as if this was straightforward.

I was interested to watch a drama on ITV called, ‘Angela Black’ that illustrated some of the dilemmas of help seeking. The heroine had few female supporters. The most helpful was a friend, ditched 8 years earlier, who provided material and psychological support. In the end, the protagonist turned to one of her male tormentors to help her carry out her plan to get back her two children. I thought that this was stretching credibility a bit but I had to remember that this was a story not a documentary.

In my own work, I have become interested in the notion of interdependence and how it might shape our attitudes to those who ask for help. Much has been written about the notions of dependence and independence by the disability sector, as the disabled have demanded greater autonomy and independence as their right.

Angela, the heroine, acted mostly alone, taking control of her situation, building to a violent conclusion as she wreaked revenge on her husband. In the final scene, she was seen walking in a street with her two boys, looking defiant and perhaps a bit worried – I had a sense that she did not think her relationship was over, simply because the husband would demand access to the children. But the picture of the nuclear family remained – there was no supporters surrounding her. She had overcome dependence on the mental health services (completely delivered by women) amongst other institutions to establish her independence and regain control of her life and her children. She was strong because of her inner resilience, not a weak help seeker.

Strategies with domestic abuse survivors and victims often emphasize resilience and empowerment in the women themselves without providing them with many resources. In this loss of control, I can see the parallels with those with a disability or those with a chronic illness, such as myself.

How do we ask for help that maintains our dignity and allows us autonomy in decision making? Feminists have suggested that women are better at getting help because our boundaries are more porous stretching across generations – elders and children – and the multiplicity of arenas we occupy, both public and private. These factors may provide more opportunities for friendship and neighbourliness. Feminists and some disability writers stress interdependence and point out that we will all rely on others at some time or other and we should ask for help now and again (and be brave enough to keep asking) – and offer it too.

Recently, I asked some friends and my brother to help me plant a wildflower hedge. Initially, I thought I would hire a company to do it for me but then I thought it would be a good social event for friends who liked gardening and I could catch up with those I had not seen for some time. So I asked and they all agreed to come. I was delighted, the hedge was planted and we had tea, cake and chat afterwards. Such were the rewards of acknowledging my interdependence.

I suspect that Angela does not have a bright future – maintaining her control and her isolation will take a lot of effort and some anger. The moral of the story did not seem to be make more friends of the type who was so helpful, but rely on your own cunning to outwit the baddies. From the research I have read, those with rich and sustaining friendship networks go on to more fulfilling and safer lives.

Why do we invest so much in this notion of independence? Is it a male value that we have all bought into – a self-made man as the apogee of success?

I have continued to comment on strangers’ choice of clothing. I complimented a man on a particularly fine hat he was wearing. He was so pleased and introduced me to his wife who had made it. It was a small gesture but for a couple of minutes we were almost a community!

Other papers in this research, suggest to me that neighbourhoods are important. Papers reporting on community building activities in Uganda, Vietnam and Sheffield to help women who suffer from partner violence. Those countries with a more community centred health system, with greater expectations of neighbourly support, such as Vietnam and Uganda, seemed to have had some success in raising local support to prevent violence, whilst those abused women displaced to a housing development in Sheffield learnt to rely on each other.

Female collectives are often portrayed in film as riven with conflict, see ‘Miss America’, and feminists as fairly intimidating, as seen in the recent film about the demonstration against the Miss World contest. Feminists can be funny, as the graffiti responding to sexist ad campaigns has shown and almost all the punch lines in female stand ups has feminist roots. But there may be more than an angry tinge to their routines because of injustice that may be off-putting.

Male collectives are portrayed sympathetically such as in a recent film about a young Indian mathematician fetching up in Cambridge at the start of the 20th century where he was nurtured by a father figure and a motherly character. The dons were presented as pursuing mathematical proofs disinterestedly, and, despite a little racism, came through in the end for the outsider and accepted him into their club.

Both these examples of the collective provide the individual with agency. The Angela example leads me to suspect that in asserting her individual power and providing for her boys will not lead her to pursue strategies of interdependence.

When I am out, I sometimes vomit. I have thrown up in John Lewis on Oxford Street, the Central Court in the British Museum and a few times on Crouch End high street. Today I was in John Lewis food hall on Oxford Street, and experienced waves of nausea and had to stand leaning against a pillar to quieten down the feeling. Fortunately a staff member noticed me and my distress, offered me a chair and, seated, I managed to avoid throwing up.

People are kind. Often strangers stop to ask if I’m OK, when I am throwing up, ready to volunteer themselves to help. Sometimes, I want to ask them to hold my hand. Being sick is not painful, but I always cry afterwards and I would like some help to get over my distress. My family have become adept at holding my hand when I am sick and waiting for me to get over it. This is such a comfort.

But this kind of help involving touch is difficult to ask for in Covid times and I feel I have to reassure people that I am not contagious.

I have taken to carrying a plastic bag to throw up into and then discard – this usually works in preventing my vomit from polluting the pavement and public spaces – if I can get to the bag in time. Once the bag had a hole in it and the sick dribbled out of it over my trousers. This happened whilst I was riding a bus. I was cross because the trousers were clean on that morning.

Passenger behaviour on public transport has been kind too. I always get a seat as I sway into the bus or the tube carriage. As I totter on, people have caught me to stop me falling as the vehicle has moved off.

Are we feeling sicker? Does the pandemic improve our empathy? Has the pandemic improved our attitudes to the ill?

I am being bullied at work. I recognise the feelings of vulnerability that I experienced as a child at school. I was not very good at making friends, never with the in-crowd, and therefore vulnerable. Left out of games and not picked for school teams, I sidled around the edges of the playground trying not to be noticed to avoid being picked on. I attended a small all girls school and girls can be particularly nasty. University was such a release as I got to know a broader group of people, including men who seemed much kinder.

I have experienced bullying at work at other times and I seem to attract it – I am not good at organizational behaviour. Perhaps I am naive enough to believe that all perspectives and skills can be embraced and incorporated into the workplace, but those who work out and stick to the corporate line are so much more successful than those, like me, who are arrogant enough to try to take the organization in another direction. So to understand my cackhandedness at organizational behaviour, I did a masters in management science. This explained bullying but did not save me from it.

I also spent some years running workshops in conflict resolution for members of the community, mostly Quakers, and prisoners. As part of that, I ran roleplays where people could practice confronting those that they were having trouble with – their bosses, families, partners, friends, other prisoners, prison officers – or negotiating with their antagonists to protect themselves from psychological damage. I tried to persuade the roleplayers to declare their own feelings and to avoid blaming the other. But eventually I thought that this tactic made participants more vulnerable and validated the strategies of the bully by confirming the power they had over them.

I would often think that the participant should leave the relationship if they could or change it by altering their own behaviour – a difficult thing to do, given the complex nature of relationships and the pasts that we bring to them. It was particularly difficult for prisoners who existed in an environment drenched in power differentials where they expected oppression and humiliation. For them, it may have been more important not to get physically hurt rather than mentally damaged – although of course these are related.

During this time, I came across a model, the power triangle ‘Victim, Persecutor and Rescuer’ where those in conflict perpetuate an argument by taking up one of these roles – with the victim triggering bullying responses in the persecutor or avoiding responsibility by asking to be rescued. I often reflect on the role I play in conflicts. In this blog, I come across as the victim.

I also think that I am fragile and controlling – perhaps making me an easy target as challenges to my intellectual competence bring out a defensive fury that surprises me sometimes. I tell myself that the research project where this persecution is taking place is a piece of nonsense not worth my time but it does not make much difference to my emotional state. Thus I become a persecutor myself and so on in an endless circle.

So, I will seek to leave. The principal investigator and I dislike each other heartily. She has worked quite hard to erase me from the project as people on other projects in other organisations have done before her. I have clearly learnt nothing from previous situations, or perhaps I am just awkward and do not fit in. I remain the girl who tried to avoid conflict in the playground but appeared to create it. I am quite proud of my awkwardness but it costs me.

I think my early interest in conflict resolution was an attempt to resolve the suffering of the bullied girl. The prisoners taught me that resolution is impossible because of inherent and necessary power structures – organizations will always make us suffer. I often hear claims from celebrities that they were also bullied but transcended it through their talent and skill because of a fierce desire to be liked and popular. I did not have the confidence to transcend my outsider status to become popular. And the suffering remains unresolved and occasionally resurfaces.

I bought an egg mayonnaise sandwich the other day – quite a posh one. But I didn’t enjoy it and I only ate half. It made me think as to what I was wanting and why I have a passion for egg sarnies. Mostly, I find them cold and soggy, disappointingly bland and all round unsatisfactory.

I remember the egg butties I used to get in hospital at the end of the day. They were nothing special but they marked an end of treatment and scans for the day so I could relax and sleep. They were a comfort, like the apple crumble I also had. I buy these sandwiches now, perhaps as an attempt to regain that comfort – but it doesn’t quite work because my circumstances have changed.

I am re-organising my garden and plan to plant an orchard of a few small trees, and a shrub hedge with berries and flowers for wildlife. The partner of a good friend who has some gardening knowledge and experience came round and we talked apples. I hoped, unfairly, that she would recommend a variety that would take me back to eating apples in my childhood – sweet and crisp. I have never found an apple that was as good as the ones I ate in my family’s garden whilst reading my latest story. Perhaps, apples remind me of that childhood happiness and therefore cannot be found on a supermarket shelf.

Is taste related to memory? Have my tastes changed so much that I fail to notice the simpler foods?