Macro and micro is a two way street

Sometimes it is the micro case histories that provide the truest insight into why our culture has lost the plot.

You have to get concerned when a woman who devotes twenty-five unhappy years to providing stability for the children of a dysfunctional marriage – during which the husband has been a controlling, neglectful and verbally abusive provider of very little beyond obscene amounts of money – is vilified by siblings, friends and other passing observers because, once the children are old enough to look after themselves, she decides to leave him.

You have to fear for humanity when this same woman is prepared to give up a life of almost infinite material wealth to get some belated happiness with someone who can’t give her the lifestyle she hates (but can give her an undying equality of love and stimulation)….and the reaction of her circle is that she has lost her mind. This same circle is in turn unmoved by the fact that her husband’s sole analytical comment on her decision is, guess what, that she is completely tonto.

What kind of ‘West’ are we inhabiting when a decent person with a track record of commendable devotion to duty is deemed insane because she prefers a life of civilised discussion and healthy desire to barked orders and the unseemly pursuit of anti-social money? What kinds of society are we breeding in Europe when such self-appointed critics belong to cultures in which ‘respectability’ is deemed a more important feature than respect for professional ethics, fiscal morals, and the needs of the genuinely unfortunate? What sort of ‘model’ Asian societies are we setting up here where streets without litter are viewed as a triumph….in a State where the lowest orders are – literally – employed in a system of modern bondage?

Are we, perhaps, cementing the triumph of a Union of Somnambulent Sobeit Republics in which every questioning voice is thought a suitable inmate of the asylum?

Have we reached the stage of numbed dumbness where pavements without chewing gum are more important than human beings without even the pretence of dignified liberty? Where braindead religious fanaticism gains more media attention than the killing of a female foetus? Where political correctness about race supercedes any consideration of obscene musical misogyny and ignorant medical attitudes about AIDS?

We inhabit a world in 2013 where, all around the Globe, windows are falling out because those who aspire to build things cannot discern sh*t from putty. Where once revered paper is rendered worthless because commentators cannot tell gold from base metal. And where officials with track records more redolent of the Mafia than a selfless, grounded career in public life are put in charge of the Nation’s fortunes. ‘Fortune’ – a word once meaning ‘well-deserved good luck based on persistence’ – has come to be almost entirely associated with undeserved richesse. Can nobody any longer tell the difference between making a fortune at any price, and paying the price necessary to have good fortune?

Micro attitudes feed back into the macro picture and confirm the warped views of those in charge. So it is that the macro controllers feel vindicated (and the naysayers are vilified) when the micro dissidents are vastly outnumbered by the collaborators. As a direct result of this, petty social criminals feel themselves more and more entitled to judge good citizens….and the tabloid press encourages that sense of privilege with a non-stop stream of half-informed bigotry offering straw support for their half-baked views.

The noise from the top suggesting that cheating is good filters down persuasively, until those who might argue against this cacophony are too busy cheating each other to bother. And the depravity at the bottom then gets fed back via the Newscorps to the top, where it provides the basis for the passage of draconian surveillance laws designed to control that same citizenry. This circle is so vicious, it eats liberal democracy alive.

The bottom line is that good folks prepared to address their frailty and deal with it are deemed weak by the self-styled strong whose life histories display nothing beyond cowardly surrender to all-conquering might. The irony of all this is beyond parody and beneath contempt.

I am not a Christian. But the understanding of – and compassion for – frailty is one central plank of that religion to which I shall always cleave – albeit in a secular manner. Helping the vulnerable thrive produced 1950s Britain. Adoration of might created Nazi Germany. I know where my preference lies, and I will never apologise for it.

Earlier at The Slog: Brenda and Barack go quietly Constitution-changing