Trading places

I know I have delved into this syndrome before, but as the years pass it has become so marked, it’s worth discussing the updated version. Especially as, a couple of days ago, in one of those moments where one is thinking about something entirely unrelated, the insight involved was made sharper for me by one particular event.

In every human culture, two groups will always exist: the managers and the managed. This role confrontation has been the subject of many formats in the performing arts: psychiatrists and lunatics, gamekeepers and poachers, cops and robbers, electors and the elected, savers and lenders and so on.

But pretty much since (I would suggest, around 1994) a great many of the traditional roles have been reversed. And this exchange of job functions I believe is symptomatic of our cultural malaise.

Thus do we find that those observing society search not for a cure of its mental illness, but instead hail and applaud the maniacs who repeat endless assertions despite massive evidence that they’re wrong. Those who wish to finance borrowers give no thought at all to the savers without whom they would have no business model at all. Rather, they ignore the savers – and pretend that money to lend out to those already drowning in debt can be created by simply printing it.

Those born to a life of employing gamekeepers somehow find it perfectly normal to promote the poachers, perhaps based on some spurious faith in the ability of crooks to keep the circus running without safety nets. Given unexpected power of course, the poachers do not eschew their wicked ways: on the contrary, they merely use the larger canvas as a means to move beyond catching rabbits, switching instead to the process of ordering the gamekeepers to murder their employers.

Cops used to catch robbers, but that became too difficult decades ago. Instead, they at first switched to working for the Revenue by collecting taxes, and then for Government pc agendas. Now it has finally dawned on Plod that he can cut out the middle men, and instead work directly for the crime bosses. These might be Russian oligarchs, antipodean psychos, or child traffickers: the Boys in Blue long ago stopped being fussy about the nature and aims of their ultimate employers.

Finally – and probably most significantly – there was once an arrangement whereby (after 1888 and the Third Reform Act) for quite a ling time politicians worked for the People. Now they work to control the People, having chosen instead to work for the money-and-power men: the builders, the banks, the multinationals, the bureacrats, and the media. We are reduced to turkeys with little to vote for beyond Christmas; small wonder, then, that Russell Brand argues in favour of not voting.

The Church once guided its flock, now the flock deserts it, demanding to guide the Church on what is right or wrong. The BBC once saw its role as that of educating, engaging and informing the citizen; now it crawls fearfully away from Government and listens obsessively to the will of the lowest brow. Teachers once hauled parents to one side at PTA meetings….now they face being assaulted for exacting any discipline at all upon little Wayne.

No one political Party, social group, business sector or gender is solely to blame for this arse-about-face. We the citizenry must accept some of the responsibility for selling ourselves into ever-encroaching slavery. And the media, pols, Sir Humphreys, bankers, priests, teachers and cops must try harder to look in the mirror now and then.

Ultimately, this is a story of everyone absolving themselves of responsibility, choosing instead to make excuses about why this or that function was no longer relevant or important. Those who should manage no longer want to be accountable; and the managed no longer care to call them to account.

Hence our current predicament. The reality today is that the powerful have become accustomed to doing what they want. From here onwards, we the vulnerable can no longer hide behind the usual excuses: either we remind those in charge of their function (and their ultimate vulnerability to us) or they will cease to be accountable or controllable.