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Oct 25
2017
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Helen Whitten
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I fear this may turn into a bit of a rant … but if you’re sitting comfortably then I’ll begin and we shall see. Equally, you can always switch off but I hope you will hang on in here and see if it makes you think about how policies are being formulated today and perhaps question what feels fair. The issues I discuss revolve around some of the news stories that have been reported in the media recently and that have made me question how minority interests can alter the way all of us are being treated, whether we like it or not.
For example, I read in the paper yesterday that Britain’s Foreign Office has said that the term “pregnant woman” should not be used in a UN treaty because it “excludes” transgender people. Well I am sorry, I have every compassion with transgender people and hope that their needs are met and supported. However, no-one has asked me (or, I suspect, many other women) how we wish to be described in any UN Treaty. As a mother I choose to describe myself as a woman, as a ‘she’ or a ‘her’. I don’t mind if others call themselves ‘ze’ or ‘it’, or any other pronoun, just so long as they understand that it is respectful of my wishes to call me a she. As a pregnant woman I would have wished to have been described as such and not as some kind of neutral person. A pregnant transgender can choose for themselves what they prefer but not impose this on me. Just let me also choose. Surely the aim of inclusion is just that. By raising the identity of one group one does not have to wipe out the identity of another.
This news comes on top of the Office for National Statistics stating that they may no longer list whether we are a man or a woman in the next census. Apparently ‘other’ is not acceptable to lobby groups as a third option and so we may all be lumped into the same box as just ‘people’. I find this somewhat offensive. Mind you, I don’t mind being offended as I believe it is good to have one’s thoughts challenged. Nor do I mind being outvoted but both need to be based on the premise that someone has asked my opinion. But they haven’t. How many people have the ONS actually asked about whether this is acceptable?
I cannot see how the government, NHS or educational establishments can plan for the future if they do not know which type of people they are planning for. How do they ensure that there are adequate ante-natal and maternity services in the future if they don’t know how many women, or indeed transgenders, may end up needing them? How can they ensure that there are adequate services to cover prostate cancer if they don’t know how many men might require them? How do boys’ or girls’ schools plan places if they are not given detailed and reliable statistics in the Census about how many boys or girls are being born? Of course transgender requirements also need to be taken into account in a more inclusive way but men and women should not be lost in the process. It’s taken centuries for women to be counted at all so I am loathe to become invisible again.
We need to promote diversity and respect for every person living in this country, whether this relates to gender, race, religion or sexual orientation, but it seems to me that those who profess to be most liberal and who demand respect for themselves are in danger of neglecting to grant respect to others. If I am willing to call you ‘ze’, please allow me to be called ‘she’.
The discussion reminds me of a friend who, at the peak of the New Age movement in the 1990s, observed that there existed a “New Age Gestapo” – eg those who thought themselves so enlightened that they treated others as lower beings if they didn’t ‘get’ what the supposedly-enlightened ones were talking about. “Oh, you’re not on the journey yet” or “ you haven’t reached that stage of enlightenment yet” they would say patronisingly. Much the same is beginning to happen with the supposedly liberal diversity initiatives today – anyone who doesn’t immediately conform to the chosen viewpoint (chosen by a small but forceful group, I believe) is called a bigot. And that approach is far from liberal. It is fascist.
This was the sort of language that was used in a BBC radio play I heard about the subject, in which a mother at a school professed some concern that a boy who decided he was a girl could immediately have access to the girls’ toilets and changing rooms. It seemed to me to be a perfectly legitimate concern but the woman in the play was judged as prejudiced and ignorant. I didn’t hear any attempt to understand or allay her concerns. Instead everyone who agreed with the transgender agenda, as it was expressed, was “right” and anyone who didn’t was “wrong” and should be put back in their box and over-ruled. This is not inclusive nor respectful. This is not integration and it is not an example of a desire to understand others. The issues raised by the transgender movement are perfectly legitimate. But just because some people believe themselves to be non-binary should not result in silencing those who wish to describe themselves as binary.
Unless all people can express themselves and be accepted in the way they prefer (though obviously not if it is inciting hatred or violence to others) then it is not reflective of true diversity. What happens to those who would rather be called a pregnant woman, or told that their baby is a boy or girl rather than a person? They are treated as if they are unenlightened, as if they are definitely not on message and therefore in some way antediluvian, rather than just someone with the perfect right to voice a different opinion.
But different opinions are not tolerated these days it seems. These reports, along with the coverage of no-platforming, where certain lecturers are silenced at university, and where students demand ‘safe spaces’ or warnings before they read violent passages of war or rape, make me wonder what has happened to reasoned debate. I read today that Cambridge University will provide students with trigger warnings about articles that may contain right-wing politics (why not also left-wing communism?), paedophiles or eating disorders. This seems an anomaly as this so-called “snowflake” generation have been exposed to more violent and sadistic movies and video games than we ever were (I read today that horror movies are the fastest growing film genre) and yet apparently can’t be exposed to certain books or plays, including Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, in case it upsets them.
How can this elite group of intelligent young people attending university possibly learn about the history of humanity if they want to whitewash the reality of the cruelty and violence that human beings have and continue to carry out? If they aren’t willing to learn from the events of the past how will they be able to identify trends that might threaten humanity in the future? And why are the Vice-Chancellors pandering to these demands when university should surely be, as Universities Minister Jo Johnson stated this week, about freedom of expression and opening the under-graduate mind to new ideas?
Minorities need to be heard and respected but my point is that this does not mean everyone else has to conform to their demands. I suspect that the majority of students understand that they need to read the nasty bits of history or literature but it is the minority lobbying for no-platforming, no-offence and gender-neutrality who seem to get their voices heard. These lobby groups are influencing government and university bodies before the rest of us have had a chance to comment. Everyone else just has to shut up, as do, it seems, those women who would rather be recorded as a “pregnant woman” or listed as a woman in the census. On the one hand we are being told that gender is not binary but the argument around this is decidedly binary – you’re on our message or you’re not.
It strikes me that to move away from these binary arguments, which only cause judgement and alienation, both young and old would benefit from practising formal debating skills. Here they would be given the task of arguing for the opposite opinion to that which they have previously attached themselves. This could enable people to realize that there are many perspectives and that there is often some good reason in the arguments of the other side that they might have closed their mind to previously. This could result in closer understanding of common ground and a truer integration of diversity. As John Stuart Mill wrote in On Liberty:
He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion…
(which leads me to think, on another topical and divisive subject, that this would be an excellent exercise for Brexiteers and Remainers alike!)
So, in summary, all I am asking is that if you wish me to understand your perspective and respect your right to hold it, then please do the same with mine and don’t demand that everyone is treated the way you wish to be treated, when they individually may wish to be treated differently.
Oct 10
2017
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Helen Whitten
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Summer holidays are over but the memories can last a lifetime. We have just had one of the most relaxing holidays we have ever experienced – in Greece on the island of Lefkada. A comfortable hotel, the San Nicolas, in the sleepy fishing village of Mikros Gailos, overlooking an exquisite view of a peaceful bay surrounded by unspoilt hills and mountains. There were two tavernas where we could sit and watch the fisherman load their nets and return with lobster, bream and red mullet. It got me thinking about holidays past and recent and the ingredients that make them memorable. Inevitably each of us look for different things from travel and David and I are lucky in enjoying similar pastimes, sometimes an adventure and sometimes a simple laze in the sun. This holiday was the latter.
We relaxed, walked, swam in incredibly clear waters, and read some excellent books. For those of you who appreciate a holiday reading list I will share with you that between us we read Yuval Harari’s Sapiens, Sam Bourne’s To Kill the President, George Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier (more on that to come in another blog!), Peter Nicholls’ Us, Rose Tremain’s The Gustav Sonata, Kamila Shamsi’s Home Fire, Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Patrick Mcgrath’s The Wardrobe Mistress, Irvin D. Yalom’s Staring at the Sun, Robert Harris’ Lustrum, and the start of his new book Munich. What a luxury to be able to lie next to the sea in warm sunlight and have one’s mind stimulated by so many new ideas, scenes, characters and events all happening in one’s head. And nothing, absolutely nothing, in one’s Outlook diary to have to rush to or action. Heaven.
This also gave me the time to reflect on memories of holidays as a child, as a parent or travelling alone. Very recently a friend of mine happened to mention that he only ever went on holiday abroad once with his parents. It made me realize that this was the same for me. My parents took us on boating holidays on the Norfolk Broads when we were young and then we had one holiday in Brittany as a family when I was about 14. After that they sent us alone to families in France, Spain, Italy to learn the language, broaden our minds and discover how to manage travelling independently. Invaluable. As I heard someone quote once, travel is one thing you buy that actually makes you spiritually richer.
Travel was expensive in the 50s and 60s. I think today’s young have accumulated many more air miles by the time they are 20 than I did by the time I was 40. The no-frills airlines have made travel accessible to vast numbers of people so that today people see the world and mix with other cultures as a routine part of life. Previous generations did not have this luxury. I remember that when I worked as a researcher for the late Sir Alistair Horne on The Official Biography of Harold Macmillan, he told me how Harold Macmillan had commented that although the charter flights from Gatwick flew noisily over his house in Sussex, Macmillan was actually delighted whenever he saw one of those yellow Clarkson’s planes as it meant that all kinds of people who could not previously have travelled abroad were now able to do so.
Later, as a parent myself, I realized that my parents hadn’t always had as relaxing a time as they might have wished on our family holidays! A time on the Norfolk Broads when my father got our boat stuck under Potter Heigham Bridge and never forgave us children for hiding downstairs in embarrassment. Another year, taking us on the River Thames, the engine broke down just as we were heading for a weir – luckily we were saved from a nasty drop by someone throwing us a rope!
But I suspect the worst holiday for them was when I was about 13 and my brother 15. My father answered an advertisement in The Times for a holiday on a houseboat in Cornwall. The boat was dilapidated and turned out to be at the bottom of a cliff, with the nearest toilets at the top of the cliff. When the tide went out we were on mud flats and the boat tilted dramatically to one side so that everything fell off the tables and shelves. As we manoeuvred to get on or off the houseboat, we were watched by an ancient Cornish fisherman whose boat was moored next to ours. He observed us with a venomous sneer on his face. And it rained and rained. There are only so many clotted cream teas one can eat and I suspect my parents struggled, trying to amuse us teenagers. We curtailed our stay. Of course as selfish young I suspect we only thought about how bored we were and gave little heed to how difficult the whole experience must have been for our parents.
When I think back on family life, though, it wasn’t the holidays that stand out in my memory as the most enjoyable moments. It was the simple times when our parents joined us in the garden to play French Cricket, or sat by the fire with us playing Cluedo or Monopoly. But for personal development and broadening of insight, travel is life changing. I wonder what your own experience of holidays has been as a child, parent or adult? I wonder what memories my sons have of our own family hols!
So, as we return and autumn arrives, I have been pondering how I can continue to keep Greece in my mind through the winter, so that I can feel I am on holiday even when I am not. Alain de Botton explores the experience of travel in his thought-provoking book The Art of Travel. He mentions J.-K.Huysman’s novel A rebours, 1884, whose eccentric hero, the Duc des Esseintes, decides to go to England after reading Charles Dickens. He gets as far as the Gare Saint Lazaire and visits an English tavern where he enjoys roast beef and Stilton and some ale but then decides it would be too much trouble to take the train to London. After all, had he not just experienced ‘England’ in this tavern and was that not enough? Apparently the Duc never left home again!
De Botton also describes another eccentric, Xavier de Maistre, born in 1763, who wrote a description of travelling around his own bedroom. De Maistre recommended this pursuit for those who were too poor to travel or had fear of highwaymen. He wrote of how, in his pink and blue pyjamas, he took the time to notice the elegance of the furniture in his bedroom as if for the first time, his argument being that we become blind to things of everyday beauty through habituation.
It’s an interesting phenomenon that the brain files as wallpaper those views we see often. We hardly notice the pictures on the walls of our homes, don’t look often enough with detail at the scenery we pass on our way to work, hardly compute the type of architecture that surrounds us, unless we have a little more time to wander rather than ‘be on the way somewhere’. This is the key difference to me of a holiday – the time to wander, reflect.
One thing I have learnt to do, since reading The Art of Travel, is to recognize that travel is in the mind. Also that our experience of travel relates to what we focus on. We can be in a beautiful place and yet have an argument with our partner, or only notice the negative aspects of the place we are visiting.
Equally, we can be back home and imagine, from time to time, that we are on holiday. I sometimes pretend I have arrived in London for the first time as a tourist. Despite having lived there since 1967, I imagine I am seeing the architecture for the first time, hearing the sounds of a busy ‘foreign’ city anew, noticing the amazing parks and gardens, the museums and galleries. This way I can have a holiday in my mind any time I like. And from now on I shall occasionally travel back to the sunshine on the waters of Mikros Gailos bay to refresh my mind with an imaginary summer even in the depths of an English winter. Where might you go …?
Sep 21
2017
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Helen Whitten
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I have been drawn to thinking about trust this week. How does one build trust to go back on a tube if one was involved in the Parson’s Green incident? Would I be willing to book a ticket on Ryan Air or would I be concerned that they might cancel my flight? Is Putin hacking to influence the German election? What does it take to create and maintain trust, or rebuild it when it has been lost?
The definition of trust I found online is a “firm belief in the reliability, truth, or ability of someone or something”. We know from listening to politicians from around the world that words themselves do not create trust. It’s easy to say something, quite different and more difficult to do it. So, as the old phrase goes, “action speaks louder than words”. I value those members of my family, colleagues or friends who do what they say they will do, who are there for me in a reliable way. It means that they provide some kind of anchor of stability in this wild and uncertain world.
But if that is what I value and expect of others then of necessity this is what I need to provide for them too and sometimes that requires that I put a mirror up to myself and accept where I have achieved a goal of reliability and where I haven’t. I fear I can identify several moments in my life where I have disappointed myself and others. We are all fallible and of course our politicians equally so.
Self-trust also means that I need to look to myself to follow through on goals that I have identified as important to me – a daily walk, eating healthily, forgoing that extra glass of wine of an evening, going to the gym. Oh dear, can I actually trust myself when so many of these good intentions don’t get fulfilled? I suspect that many of us let ourselves down with these everyday goals don’t we? Except perhaps you, dear reader!
But trust holds us together as a human community and I have personally found it most helpful to be open to trusting others until they prove me wrong. I try not to do this in a naïve way but I would prefer to be open to believing in other people from the outset rather than being suspicious or doubtful of strangers unless they give me good reason to be so. In this internet age we actually trust an enormous amount of strangers don’t we? We share intimate facts about our lives with an inanimate object asking us to tell it one’s date of birth, relationships, age, bank details, love interests and more, depending on the website. And, as in the rest of life, most of the time it works, though inevitably, as in all other walks of life, there are charlatans and fraudsters. My neighbour in London rents his flat via Airbnb, as do thousands of people around the world. 99% of the time this works brilliantly for him, but just occasionally he gets a tenant from hell. However, as long as the majority of experience is positive then there is still a reason to trust that most of the time trusting others works.
We unthinkingly trust our car mechanic when we get into our car for a journey, seldom questioning whether they have tightened a necessary screw sufficiently. Likewise we trust the airplane engineer, the electrician, the gasman and so many other people who can influence our everyday safety. Indeed if we felt we had to doubt or check everything it would make our lives impossible.
Forgiving and forgetting when someone has betrayed trust is hard but possible. You don’t necessarily forgive totally, you certainly don’t forget, but nonetheless there comes a time when the incident recedes into distant memory and trust builds up again.
I have been thinking of those caught up at Parson’s Green. I was at that station on 7/7 just when they shut down the tube system. The terrible incidents of that day lingered in my mind for many weeks as I boarded a tube train, just as the IRA bombings made me cautious back in the 1970s. But gradually you realize that life is for living and that in fact it is a happier life when you can let go and trust. Even if you can’t expect all things to be well you can retain a sense that there is enough trust in the world to encourage us to value it as a precious quality that needs nurturing.
I hope that there will be enough politicians out there who endeavour to be trustworthy and lead the world with wisdom. But all political parties have done u-turns over manifesto promises. We can generally sniff out those we find flaky and intuit when something a politician says doesn’t add up. Nonetheless it is up to us as voters to keep them to their word when possible, not just to give in to a world of false news.
Ryan Air will have to work hard to regain trust though I wonder whether Michael O’Leary really cares. It might take months or even years for those involved in the Parson’s Green bomb to feel absolutely at ease as they board their tube for work or school.
And so now, because I prefer to be reliable, I shall leave early to go and pick up my granddaughter from school because I feel it is important to us both that I am not late. I like to think that she can trust me to be reliable.
Ultimately trust seems to be tied up strongly with morality – being honest, doing what you say you will do, being there when you say you will, not betraying confidences, keeping promises and not being creative with the truth. In this post-truth world these actions seem to me to be more important than ever.
Sep 14
2017
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Helen Whitten
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We seem to be having some kind of war on gender. This week a family removed their six-year-old son from a school because another boy was allowed to come to school in a dress. The event has led to much debate on the radio this week. Alongside this, leading department stores have announced that they will not brand clothes specifically for boys or girls but just for “kids”. A few weeks ago BBC2 transmitted a programme “No more boys and girls – can our kids go gender free?”
I wonder whether, in all this coverage, we are not losing sight of simple biology and common sense? After all, way before marketing or advertising came on the scene, men and women in tribes throughout the world have dressed differently and taken on different roles . In the animal world – and we are descended from apes after all – males and females look and act differently. They have not been to primary school, nor been bombarded with pink or blue clothes or stereotypical toys but nonetheless behave differently. Can we not celebrate our differences while at the same time supporting those in doubt?
Of course transgender children need compassion and if they are questioning their gender identity they need expert counselling. A child of six can have no understanding of the adult world and how it works, has not reached puberty, and is vulnerable to the ideas of their parents and teachers. It is one thing for a young boy to dress up in girls’ clothes, quite another to assume that this means he wants to go through all the biological restructuring and social upheaval that is implied in the transgender process. Clothes are only an outer wrapping. How can a child this young truly understand the lifelong implications of changing gender?
It seems to me that small children are becoming pawns within current ideological trends and the agendas of lobbying groups. It is very young children that are being discussed here – six or seven years old. In today’s world they are having thoroughly adult facts presented to them not only about transgender but also all the LGBT themes. Children are unlikely to have any real knowledge of heterosexual relationships but are now learning about all the complexities of human gender and sexuality at an extraordinarily young age. Call me old-fashioned but I believe this can be confusing. Is it helpful to expose all children to these questions at such a young age when we are actually talking about a small minority of people affected?
I feel we also need to take account of those families who may, for their own psychological or cultural reasons, put their children under pressure to change gender. I suspect many of us know those whose parents wanted a girl and treated a boy like a daughter or wanted a son and treated a daughter like a boy. Likewise there are many cultures where a boy is valued more greatly than a girl. Might making the transgender process too easy lead to family pressure?
Chatting to some teenagers recently I learnt from a thirteen year old that several of her friends decided that they were bisexual, only to change their minds a week or so later. She told us that it could be seen as cool and being heterosexual as dull. They spoke articulately of their disapproval of President Trump preventing transgenders from serving in the armed forces yet seemed unsure what being transgender really involved. There was tolerance but even in teenage years there was also confusion.
I think we are in danger of muddling up stereotypical beliefs about roles with biology. Of course we don’t want to treat girls as sissy princesses or tell boys they mustn’t cry but this is different from encouraging them to question their own gender. There are physical and hormonal differences. Males have XY chromosomes and females XX. Hormones such as testosterone and oestrogen impact both brain and body as well as behaviour. All this is discussed in detail by Professor Simon Baron Cohen of Cambridge University in his book The Essential Difference where he describes a spectrum.
The programme “No More Boys and Girls – can Our Kids go Gender Free?” made me question why we might want to have “no more boys or girls”? Humans procreate through males and females – do we really want to finish off the human race?
The programme made some valuable points about the shaping of expectations due to social norms – parents and teachers expecting girls to play with dolls and soft toys and boys to play with cars and guns etc. This was the same old stuff many of my generation attempted back in the 70s and 80s, mainly, I have to say, without success as even if we didn’t give our sons a toy gun they crafted them out of pieces of wood. Having unisex school uniforms with trousers might be practical but I do question the wisdom of having unisex school toilets, which I understand is the current plan.
We are different. We have different bodies that we have to learn to manage. Boys don’t experience periods, girls don’t experience teenage erections. There is biology that affects our lives. I personally would not have wanted teenage boys sharing toilets when I was a teenager managing periods for the first time. Even today as an adult I am quite glad of the respite of a female-only loo where I can take a breath and brush my hair without any interruptions.
Growing up is confusing. We can accept and celebrate all the LGBT differences but I believe we need to be careful not to overstate the likelihood of the experience when teenagers, especially, are notorious for copying their friends just for the sake of it. I recently heard of a 16 year old boy who transitioned to being a girl as he had felt unhappy with life and yet, having gone through major and unpleasant treatment, was just as unhappy afterwards. Another troubled young man became a woman and was equally troubled afterwards. Could their discontent have been with life in general rather than gender? Perhaps they were going through the usual teenage angst and depression that many of us go through? But they now have to live with the consequences of their decisions for the rest of their life.
Aren’t we possibly overemphasizing the media coverage on these topics? It is excellent that there is more knowledge and understanding of gender and sexuality than there was in my childhood but are we in danger of planting seeds of doubt that might not need to be there? There has to be a balance in how we express these issues.
Each gender contributes a different quality of behaviour, emotion and energy to our endlessly complex and wonderful world. I would feel sad if future generations felt unable to celebrate the differences they bring. Wouldn’t it also be rather dull? But, as I say, perhaps my ideas are out-dated. I do sometimes feel I am living in some kind of sci-fi new world where we are turning out robots who look the same and think the same! In the name of liberal ‘tolerance’ we seem in danger of creating automatons intolerant of the majority norms of nature.
Sep 06
2017
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Helen Whitten
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Do you really have to make your films so violent? We went to the cinema last Saturday and every single trailer for new movies was dystopian, explosive, violent, cruel and visually disturbing. There wasn’t a single movie that I would choose to see or that I felt added any value to our lives. But no doubt you will make money from them and your marketing teams will ensure that they are blockbusters. All I ask is do you really want your children to retain these visions as they grow up to become the leaders who will be creating their own, and our, future?
I just wonder how we have become so adapted to Hollywood producing endless brutal films? I was born in 1950 and raised on comedies and romances starring Peter Sellers or Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. Other than cowboy or war films there was little, if any, violence and Bambi was about as dark as it got. Hitchcock’s thrillers were the first I saw and then we moved into more domestic drama such as The Pumpkin Eater and Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. But films like Seven took violence into a totally new genre of sadism, as do digital games such as Grand Theft Auto and others I don’t even want to think about. Killings, torture and sexual cruelty seem to have become the norm.
I remember my dear late Polish brother-in-law Leo commenting that you only get such unpleasant movies when the life around you is reasonably comfortable. Raised in Poland in the war he knew more about life’s real cruelties and barbarity than I did and I can see that if you are actually experiencing violence in your life you are less likely to want to watch more of it. Perhaps it is because we have Kim Jong Un, Putin and Trump arming themselves up for a potential world catastrophe that I felt all the more disgusted by the onslaught of violence I saw in the trailers at the Vue Eastleigh last weekend.
Even children’s stories are no longer the sweet innocent narratives they used to be. If you watched Mary Poppins or the early versions of The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe they are far tamer than recent blockbuster versions of the classics, such as The Jungle Book. Even Paddington Bear became a rather horrifying version about the threatened taxidermy of a small bear. I think my 6-year-old granddaughter has seen more movies in her short life than I had seen by the time I reached adulthood and I am aware that the 3-D aspect of cinematography makes things far more realistic and immediate – which can be wondrous but also terrifying. Recently a writing colleague had her children’s novel, about evacuee children in World War II, rejected by a publisher as “the children in the story were not in enough danger to be of interest to today’s young audience”. Should children be exposed to a continuous ramping-up of adrenalin arousal through increasingly frightening scripts?
The thunderous Dolby surround sound that blasts our ears as the film or ads start is another assault, surely unnecessary and makes us all jump out of our seats. Do you think we are all deaf? Or perhaps you want to make us deaf? The small child in the cinema next to me in The Jungle Book was terrified.
The problem is that the sounds and images linger in the imagination. They acclimatize our minds to violence so that it no longer seems as shocking as it once was. And yet violence is shocking. I look at the state of the world today with its religious and ideological wars and the number of young men excited about taking up arms and I question how we are still, in 2017, determined to kill one another. Now that we realize what a small and vulnerable planet we reside on I would have hoped that we would not still be polluting the environment with bombs, explosions, chemical weapons or acid attacks. And I guess I just don’t appreciate being reminded of all this horror with yet more apocalyptic views of the future dressed up as entertainment.
I have written before of Ekhart Tolle (author of bestsellers A New Earth and The Power of Now) and his concept of a ‘pain body’. This is a part of our emotional make-up that we can unconsciously hook into – the part of us that stops to gawp at a motorway accident, or wants to read about some horrendous murder in the paper. He talks of how newspapers and media-makers play on the pain-body aspect of we fallible humans to draw us towards the negative. But the important message is that once we become aware of what hooks us we have the power to choose not to read, not to watch, not to stop on the motorway. And of course this links to the points I made in my last blog, Let’s Shake Ourselves out of this gloom, https://www.helenwhitten.com/thinking-aloud/lets-shake-ourselves-out-of-this-gloom/ because it is hard to be creative in a way that could be beneficial to human life on earth if we are too steeped in the negativity of the pain-body.
So surely, dear screenwriters, you have the talent and capacity to use your creativity in constructive ways? I am not talking of dumbing down but I am talking about being broader and perhaps deeper in your depiction of life – the film The Intouchables comes to mind as I write. There are endless intricacies and complexities in everyday life that make excellent topics for drama – perhaps you could open your eyes and minds to different descriptions and studies of human behaviour?
The future does not have to be dystopian but if these are the images that are sewn into the neurons of the young people who are watching your movies then perhaps that will be the only image they will be able to conjure up? The power of imagination is immense and the power of unconscious drives equally so. The future of life on earth isn’t looking that rosy right now and personally I don’t feel that your violent movies are contributing towards making life on earth a better place.
No doubt you will say that I am an old fogey and not, in any case, your target audience. You might comment that I am being too soft and sensitive about future generations. But please just give a moment’s thought to the kind of images and stories you wish your own children or grandchildren to be exposed to … and see whether that shifts your thinking when you craft future scripts? I hope so.
Aug 30
2017
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Helen Whitten
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Are you as fed up as I am with the amount of negativity and pessimism that exists in this country? Watching the 10 o’clock news does not make for a happy bedtime. Almost every media report is slanted towards the negative – for example, what the NHS is failing to do rather than the daily miracles they perform. The press have the power to shape our perspectives and beliefs and drama sells newspapers so inevitably stories can be ramped up to catch the public’s attention. Our political leaders reinforce these messages by talking of division and a “broken Britain”. The worst thing is that we end up believing it! We need more balanced perspectives.
This morning we happened to re-read some paragraphs of Napoleon Hill’s Success through Positive Mental Attitude. The passages reminded me how important his message of a positive mental attitude is to happiness, health and success.
Hill’s message also reminded me of an initiative I had wanted to set up way back in 1995 to “Think Positively for Britain” . I don’t know if you remember but the recession of the early 90s had put us in the doldrums and I became aware that we are very good at the doldrums in the UK, that we have a habit of denigrating ourselves and being apologetic for more-or-less everything we do or stand for. And I felt then, as I do now, that such negative messages only lead us into a state of paralysing disempowerment. As I wrote in my report in 1995 “every time we talk negatively about the UK we bolster the image of a failing and disintegrating nation”. Do we really want the rest of the world to see us and respond to us in this way, particularly when Messrs Barnier and Juncker are happy to do this for us?
It seems to me all the more urgent now that we shift ourselves out of this gloom. How can we bring up a confident new generation when the messages that young people receive are that they are in a country that is about to fall off a “cliff-edge”? We need to inspire the young to rise above the negativity and create success despite the very real challenges we face in the world. Positive expectations, when based in realistic possibilities, motivate others to step up. We need our leaders to talk of unity and vision and what each of us can do to help achieve this.
We have a tradition in this country of helping entrepreneurs and supporting small businesses. Start-ups are given tax relief and concessions on VAT until their business is established. In July this year the employment rate (the proportion of people aged from 16 to 64 who are in work) was 74.9%, the highest since comparable records began in 1971. Our youth unemployment figures are 12.3% compared to up to 46% in Greece and many young people in the UK want to, and do, start their own businesses – our tech companies are thriving as are our design, music, fashion, film, life sciences and service industries. That’s pretty good news as far as I am concerned.
We beat ourselves up about everything – Brexit, racism, inequality, poverty, housing, health, education. You name it, we complain about it and of course there are very real improvements to be made in many areas but right now we need people to feel energetic and willing to work hard in order to tackle the challenges of a changing relationship with the world. As Napoleon Hill says, we need to attract success by being the sort of people others want to work with. We have shown ourselves capable of this in the past so there’s no reason why we can’t do it again.
I suggest that we need to review the reality of our tendency to apologise for our existence – they say the Brits say “sorry” even when others have bumped into them (read Watching the English by Kate Fox).
Are we really that much worse a country than others? Yes, there are anti-immigrant groups here but look at the rest of the world – the numbers who voted for Le Pen in France, the far right movements in the Netherlands, Hungary, Poland, Austria. All over the world there are many families who do not condone their offspring marrying outside their ethnic or religious community. I am not condoning this but I just question whether we are truly worse than others are? There is an assumption that by the small majority that voted for Brexit it makes us all racists, though certainly not everyone who voted for Brexit was racist nor a Little Englander.
Yes, we have some class issues but the Americans have their Ivy League, the Italians have any number of Counts and Contessas, the French politicians have almost all attended the elite Ecole Nationale d’Administration (ENA) and the Indians have their caste system. Yes, we had an Empire but so did the Dutch, French, Chinese, Romans, Spanish, Portuguese and many more. Yes, we have inequality issues of social mobility but believe me it is a very different world to that of my 1950s childhood in terms of opportunity for all. We have a long way to go still but we need to acknowledge the changes that have been made and use them as a springboard. We need to remember, also, that not everyone wants to move upwards – that people have communities of friends, cultural and family networks that feel comfortable to them. I also question whether, while the term “posh” is used as an insult, it encourages people to move up or become wealth creators? People tend to use the term “rich” as a criticism, forgetting that wealth creators can become philanthropists.
I am not condoning the situations that need improvement but my question is to check whether we are really so much worse than others in the way we currently seem to think of ourselves? Our institutions of government, law and social services are not perfect but they match up pretty well to those in other countries. Let’s acknowledge what we have developed over the centuries. It isn’t about comparing ourselves with others necessarily, as comparison doesn’t always work when each country has its own unique circumstances. It is about perspective. Let’s not judge ourselves more harshly than we judge others. It isn’t good for our future, especially in a time of false truths and radicalisation.
The majority of people here live in better circumstances than ever before. We have a reasonably civilised and tolerant society where we strive for equality of the sexes, classes, gender and race, even if we inevitably don’t succeed as much as we would like to. Far more people today have a roof over their head, central heating, fridges, cookers, washing machines, televisions, a mobile phone and cars, than in my childhood. We benefit from a National health service and free education. We can drink the water from the tap and be assured that our sewage system works pretty well most of the time. Having travelled to over 50 countries, I feel we have much to be grateful for and yet we certainly can’t be complacent and need to keep striving for improvements.
My argument isn’t about nationalism or empire building or any political movement. We don’t have to wait for politicians or social services or anyone else in order to be able to start conversations that remind us of the better aspects of life here. We can do it now, for ourselves. We can build up a sense of confidence and worth, a sense of belonging to something good. This focus can make us happier and also improve our health. The Danes may have invented Hygge but surely we have done cosy for generations? We live in a beautiful country made up of a multitude of good people: let us celebrate what we have achieved. We need to believe in ourselves and our ability to create more success through collaboration, despite the challenges. Let’s start describing ourselves as a country in which there is enterprise, achievement and potential.
In my 1995 initiative I suggested that we allocate a time each day, say 8.15am, where we focus on thinking positively about what is working and could work, rather than what is not. I suggested people identify and share just one thing that pleased them about living here – for example, perhaps public libraries, public footpaths, national parks and forests, our immense generosity as a nation when giving to charity, Bake-Off …? Why don’t you name what comes to your mind and do let me know – and if you manage to persuade a journalist to print a positive story I will give the first ten people who do so a copy of my CD on positive thinking!
Refs: https://www.statista.com/statistics/266228/youth-unemployment-rate-in-eu-countries/
Napoleon Hill: Think and Grow Rich; Napoleon Hill and Clement W Stone: Success through Positive Mental Attitude; Napoleon Hill and Dennis Kimbro: Think and Grow Rich: A Black Choice
Kate Fox: Watching the English
Charlotte Abrahams: Hygge: A Celebration of Simple Pleasures. Living the Danish Way.
Positiveworks Ltd is now owned by Sixth Sense Consulting www.sixthsenseconsulting.co.uk