One of the wilder ideas that occurred to me over the
weekend was that Brexit is the result of losing our sense of humour and humanity. More than
that it is a sign that we – here in the UK at least – have lost our ability to enjoy
the company of other human beings. And I’m not talking about the false
hysterical screeching and gurning that passes for ‘fun’ on the TV and the ‘look
at my amazing life’ pictures on social media.
The clarion call of the fascist frog Farage is ‘reclaim our borders’ while he and his ilk do very well thank you from a world
where – as far as making money is concerned – there are no borders. It belies a state of affairs that is very global for the rich and very insular for a majority. It is a world
– as I’ve pointed out many times on this blog – where everything that used to
be owned by the British people has been sold off and often to wealthy
individuals in other countries. None of this reality seems to have bothered the
wealthy public school boys who lied and wheedled to get this falsehood through.
Many of the mob conned by the Leave campaign can be heard banging on about the
‘not-so-long-ago’ when ‘WE’ ruled the waves. Well not me obviously. As someone
with Caribbean ascendants my lot would have been the ones they were
happy to rule. I.e. the slaves of the empire that were kidnapped, starved, raped, murdered and
exploited for profit.
But put all of the obvious – but studiously ignored -
realities to one side. This new idea – that humans have just stopped realising
how nice it is to be nice to each other, occurred to me because of something
that happened at the end of last week.
I was treated to coffee and a bun by two very dear
old friends of mine. We met in an Italian restaurant at 9am and were served by
a friendly, efficient Italian waiter. When we left some 90 minutes later the
waiter remarked to the friend who paid the bill how nice/unusual it was
to have people in the café in the morning (presumably the alcohol oiled later
clients were more vociferous) who talked and laughed and really seemed to be
enjoying each other’s company.
It took a while to fathom what he meant. Then I
realised that what passes for socialising these days often involves groups of
people meeting up in places like that but with everyone permanently clutching
their smart phones and not really fully engaging with the people they are
actually ‘with’.
Of course, if my no-real-fun theory were in any way close
to correct we might, for example, end up with some sort of faux clownish buffoon as Prime
Minister…
Maybe if we still talked to each other and had real
human interaction we’d remember just how little difference there really is
between us. We all need oxygen, food, sleep, real contact and love. The first
two are in danger and the last two rely on each other.
On the 28th July 2015 I put up this blog
post More Less-Contact Is Making Us Horrible
And how much more horrible we seem to be…