Porcelain perch 2 - we're all in it together

The human being.  So complex, individual and flawed, it defies any real attempt at understanding.  Individual human beings can’t even understand themselves – what chance does one person have of understanding another?  Multiply that by a rolling eight billion or so and by all the generations that have gone before and you have a very large, complex and flawed situation.  Trying to isolate, classify and write laws of behaviour around all of that is bound to go wrong.  People and institutions instead acquire expertise in the models they have just designed.  A miss is as good as a mile.  Trying to shoehorn people into such models of Utopia can only lead to grief.  What you usually end up with is mass suffering.

Some models do describe and can maybe even predict tendencies, but they are only ever partially correct and only achieve success some of the time.  And often such models are not used for the benefit of the majority of humans, but to predict the actions of shoppers in high streets or voters in democracies in order to manipulate outcomes for the benefit of the small number who believe they have powers equivalent to those of Merlin the magician and share the destiny of Arthur.

Humans seem to have more success examining actions retrospectively.  But there are two points here: 1) we call that being wise after the act; 2) the evidence examined and conclusions arrived at often depend on the kind of story the sponsor is looking for, which depends on what’s in it for them.

Why am I wasting ink on all this?

Well, I’ve just been discussing politics, corruption and what constitutes a desirable outcome (Utopia?); the existence of something called Left and something called Right and what all that might mean for “ordinary” people, whatever they are; and what the actions of “ordinary” people might mean for anyone else.

Perhaps the high-watermark for “ordinary” people (I’ll dispense with the quotation marks now, if that’s ok) in western Europe and Britain was something often referred to as the “post-war settlement”.

In the aftermath of the landslide victory of the British Labour Party in 1945, there was a sustained period of mutual dependency between workers and managers, particularly within Britain’s large nationalised industries.  Many of them had been exhausted by the years of war effort.  Britain itself was in heavy debt and in need of major rebuilding: housing, infrastructure and businesses.

The settlement was a system of nods and winks between politicians and the leadership of industry and labour, acknowledging that everyone was really in the same boat.  Sure there were strikes, daily industrial action of some kind, but mostly over trivial disagreements.  Much of it boiled down to the leaders of the various “sides” justifying their position.  In other words, it was phoney: “smoke-filled rooms”; “beer and sandwiches”.  When you scratch the surface, what you’re looking at is another example of self-interest.  Of course, all of that was strictly between those in the know – those whose faces fitted. There was something corrupt about the whole system.

Corruption has many manifestations.  Where I am now, there’s general concern with the corrupt actions of politicians and officials.  I’m told many members of the party that may well return to office next month are in prison, or have spent time there on corruption charges.  And, apparently, the Left isn’t clean either. Surprised?

The UK has seen its share of scandals.  The media express shock and surprise at each one.  There’s usually a raft of initiatives in response – I remember being made aware of a book of indulgences, which had to be signed in the event that we’d been entertained by a contractor.  Many contractors were, indeed, very entertaining.  Does that mean there’s no longer corruption in the UK and that we can look down our nose at everyone else?  No.  Of course not. 

And corrupt behaviour isn’t confined to the top, either.  I can remember the days when as employees we honestly(!) believed we had a right to pilfer/steal from our employer.  Sometimes it was petty, other times less so.  The firm my dad worked for brought in the police to bust a racket involving “ordinary” workers and senior managers – an example of the “post-war settlement” at work.

Corruption is a facet of human behaviour.  The louder we hear a person proclaiming their purity, the more closely we should examine their affairs – public and private.

What seems to cause outpourings of strife is the proximity of one group or another to the pot at any one time.  At the moment, it’s the strivers and their clans and dynasties who have best access.  In the period between 1945 and Margaret Thatcher, strivers were not encouraged.  We were all in it together.  Except some were more in it than others.