First of all, there’s no theory. In fact, I don’t know of any theories in the social sciences… I don’t think the term ‘theory’ should be applied to fields as intellectually thin as the social sciences… Theory is very different from understanding. We live our lives often pretty successfully without any theories about other people… There [are] very few areas of human life where there’s anything that you might call a theory. Even in biology, when you get very far beyond big molecules it starts to get pretty descriptive… In the world of human affairs I don’t think there’s much in the way of theory. I think the message you’ve got to take is use your sense… Look at history… Break through the propaganda images. Remember that the institutions are trying to indoctrinate you… Keep that in mind. Compensate for it. And if you do these things I think you can get as good a sense of the world as anybody has.
N. Chomsky, The New World Order. Recorded speaking at the University of Maryland (30/12/1998).
A boom surged over the reedbeds. The marsh harriers hesitated, their long, cruciform bodies suspended for an instant before they resumed their heavy-winged hawking. A treecreeper stopped on the trunk of a yew, absolutely still, then whipped suddenly back into life like a glitch in the great cosmic video feed. Another boom was heard. This time a general pause descended as the birds recognized the ancient call to moot. It was a signal given traditionally by the bittern, but none of the other birds had seen him for years. The heron said he had followed the swallows south and would never return. Others thought perhaps he had been caught by a fox or crushed by a plow. But the bittern had been an important figure, once. Even the crows and the owls begrudgingly admitted that he was worth listening to on selected topics.
And so it was that the birds started to gather in a circle around the stump of an old oak. A grasping, clutching wind lifted beneath a canopy of cloud. It tugged at the birds’ soft plumage and whipped at the reed heads, writing strange, shifting glyphs into the water beneath. Some of the birds started to mutter anxiously amongst themselves: would he really come? Was it not rather a foghorn they had heard, carried here from the coast? But by now the birds were too numerous to be mistaken, so they waited impatiently for the bittern to appear. It was two minutes to six. The setting sun fled into the west beneath a bruise of purple cloud. Then suddenly a shadow detached itself from the body of the reeds and the bittern was there, water dripping copiously from the base of his jacket.
The bittern stalked swiftly and awkwardly to the middle of the circle. A bird of retiring disposition, unaccustomed to the gaze of other animals, his frame bowed beneath their scrutiny and the weight of their expectation. When he reached the stump, however, he stood very tall, his striped neck longer even than his body, his beak thrust like a sword-stick over the congregation. His inscrutable fish-eyes picked out the starlings bobbing on a telephone wire above him, then the bright-breasted finches, tits, stippled falcons, squat and mottled drakes that formed his audience on the ground. Nervous laughter bubbled from rooks in a nearby hawthorn. The bittern cleared his throat and the sound was like the crackling of cigarette paper on a cold day.
“I have lately walked abroad. I rode in foreign vehicles, spoke in foreign tongues and afterwards I flew back over our native isles – famed for their great wealth but full of the poor and hungry, the hungry and the poor… It was not so, abroad – wherefore then this paradox? Are we not a proud and noble people? Did we not recently win this land, so rich in life and resources, from the clutches of tyranny?
“As I flew, I saw how decades of Austerity has bankrupted our towns and wrung the vitality from its people. Water. Energy. Public transport. Security. The Postal Service. Healthcare. Education. Management of the prisons. Everything privatised or monetised! Rendered flimsy and mean.
“They say that government must be weak and local government weaker: only then can business be done. And when they have total freedom these businessmen say they must bow to the forces of an unfettered economy, which represent the truest aspects of avian psychology. I say, but are they the best? They say these economic forces – these dictates of Mammon – cannot be circumvented. I say they contradicted themselves when they took an axe to our institutions and its government. They say we are rich – just look at their balance sheets! I say look at France and Germany, then look at the corpses wandering our streets. There are holes in our roads and the futures of our children.”
“We try to nourish ourselves on images of the past, but the images look ridiculous, screen-projected from collapsing walls. They will not save the tourists from disappointment. England is become a gang of pallid, tracksuited waifs marauding through a driverless, conductorless, late-running, two-carriage train on a voyage to nowhere. It is become the echo of a scream. New housing developments empty of amenities – void, therefore, of community – glide plangently past the windows. The poverty of imagination, the stench of ugliness is everywhere.
“Where is our shame? We cannot feel shame for things we do not see. The other train passengers are captivated by screens, their eyes mirrored in surfaces smooth and iridescent as an oil-slick, headphones piping an alternative present straight into their ears. Stuck in the long queue for a ticket machine, sitting on a soiled and broken chair, eating a muffin made by a 3D printer, there is always Netflix. Thus have the enervating winds of technology and the free market stripped the wealth from our society and atomised our communities. Never in the history of this country has the ordinary person been so alone and consequently so impotent.
“In the midst of this nightmare, a General Election approaches. Yet Labour is without charismatic leadership. Why this matters so much to the electorate is clear as newsprint. Over years in opposition, Labour grew demoralised, purposeless and desperate to please; then, faced with flagrant lying on the part of the government, they became self-righteous too. This unfortunate combination has made them vulnerable to media pressure, causing them to swing erratically from one position to another on contentious issues like transgender rights. The result is that Labour has become associated with the the illiberal liberal élite, embittering a large proportion of the British working class against them.
“On the other side of the benches, the Conservatives endure. Probably the least imaginative of the major parties, they continue to pump public money into their own businesses, devastating society at large and destroying the institution of government. While they may appear more resistant to media opinion than Labour, their own concessions to Trumpian electability produced Boris Johnson as Prime Minister. By refusing to be held accountable for anything, they have allowed the stupidest, most venal members of their party to entrench themselves in government and in the Lords. Ironically, they consider this evidence of success.
“Somewhere in the centre, ignored by all, lies the still-living corpse of the Liberal Democrats. At the level of public political debate they do not even exist. In this way, the power of the market, through its influence on the media and the thinking of the electorate, has eroded government competency to a critical point.
“Our country therefore lies poised for a new party to bring forth a new political method. Its ministers will be the disaffected members of other parties and its supporters will come from every corner of the land, every echelon of society. At first, our focus will be exclusively on ideas: the praxis of government and the problems facing our people. Only with an iron grip on policy can we haul ourselves above the media mêlée. Modern political debate is a game of name-calling and myth-making, but against the clarity we will bring this will become irrelevant. We reject all comparison with previous political ideologies because we want to borrow ideas from any source. We will not pretend our answers are immortal or universal – they will be expedient; appropriate to time and context. Thus will we befriend Sufis and scientists and birds of every imaginable colour. We will come with fresh eyes to the problems of the world and through discovery we will advance, fording the river stone by stone.
“Our focus on ideas will confer two further advantages. First, immunity from labels like Conservative and Liberal will allow us to borrow soldiers from the ranks of the other political parties. If we are to succeed – to rule ourselves, or to bring other, worthier candidates to power – we will need the expertise of those already in government. These refugee parliamentarians will be united under a principle that transcends them. Instead of grappling with each other, they will fall on problems like electoral reform, overpopulation, education, greenhouse gas emissions, recycling… Gradually, organically, they will find brotherhood in the excitement of discovery. Second, by focusing exclusively on policy rather than ideology, we will elevate the overall level of political discourse. We will become the bar against which other parties are measured.
“I spoke to many people during my travels and listened to their problems. They were hungry for answers… Truly, they were like children! And at the end, as I turned to go, in a pleading voice they asked: ‘But what can we do…?’ And what they meant, of course, is: ‘Give me an answer – reassure me that the experts will do something.’ But I cannot. No one can say precisely what form the solution will take, if indeed it arrives at all. I can only point to precedents, where groups of people have banded together and, after long and arduous struggle, changed laws or systems of government. There never has been a shortcut to change or an easy substitute for collective action.
“We have among us an army of young professionals who are cynical about politics, but their lives are too easy to impel them to change it. Convenience has not just liberated us from the drudgery of everyday tasks: it has made us passive, anxious and wounded our sense of personal significance and meaning. From this position, then, if you have a brain but know little about the structure of power, change seems impossible. Only by walking out of the door, across the field and over the next hill will you realise that it is up to you – it is your duty – to fall on top of a solution. This does not mean that everyone needs to become a climate scientist or a politician – but we must start to talk to each other again, find solutions as communities.
“Let me address them directly, these young people who still secretly believe love and happiness are their birthright: go listen to the waves pounding on the rocks beneath the pier; spend an afternoon in a home for the elderly. Gaia will endure with or without humanity. We are a dream passing over the pale blue film of Her mind’s eye. Now that Her climate is warming, it is likely that there is nothing to hope for except a noble end to our civilisation. We can take the Ouroboros as our emblem – a metaphor for all societies with the power to produce more than they need. To die suffocated by our own greed… That is the prospect before us now. Perhaps it is the fate of all higher forms of life.”
Gradually, the twilight took on a foreboding depth. The starlings flickered like marsh lights on the telephone wire overhead, illuminated by their portable electronic devices. Raindrops crackled on fallen leaves and plunged headlong into the reed spears. A sussuration grew until it washed away the meaning of the bittern’s words and only the faint sound of his voice was left in the darkness at the centre of the circle. The birds crowded close and listened as best they could, but the bittern, unseeing, continued at the same volume – his voice converted into a kind of static interference.
Philip Bradford 