Generation www.

You'll often hear politicians, social commentators and people born before 1970 lamenting that society has lost the ‘community spirit’ it once had. And to be fair, it’s easy to see where they're coming from. We’re a nation that lives in ignorance of our neighbours, is terrified of the under-educated and hyper-active youths terrorising the streets, and which has become utterly dependent on an economic philosophy that values the pursuit of individual wealth above all else.

In other words: we’re selfish, self-obsessed, self-loathers who are too scared to say hello to each other in case someone suddenly pulls a knife.

Yet how true is this picture? Sure, the only time I’ve met my neighbours is when they’ve come to complain about the noise I’m making. And yes it’s an inescapable fact that violent crime is on the rise. And okay, most of my friends are sufficiently worried about the (tens of) thousands of pounds of debt they got into at university that finding work with a generous salary has become more important than they might have wanted it to be back when they were younger and full of grand ideals. But but but…

Rationalisation

I’m practising my dumb grin again. I smile and nod at my colleagues, and try to ignore the feelings of despair that spring from the inanity of it all.

An Impotent Howl at the Universe

The view from my window at work ought to be inspiring. I look out onto the Thames, the Millennium Dome, and can see Crystal Palace tower if I crane my neck in just the right way. There laid out before me is all of East London, a patchwork of architectural styles from across the centuries, over-crowded with monuments that pay tribute to all Londoner’s dreams and frustrations.

I find myself drawn to the uglier parts. Those aberrations of grey concrete speak to me, the decrepit tower blocks, depressed industrial estates, and grubby over-crowded flats: that’s where you hear London’s true voice. There, among the social engineering gone wrong is the real world, where the neon lights speak of betrayed dreams instead of improbable fantasies.

A glorious past?

Until recently I was one of the bores who refused to hear a bad word about their darling city. I remember the annoying way I used to ask the miserablists, “What about the cosmopolitan culture? The entrepreneurial spirit? The history? The night-life? Surely you must agree there’s a unique buzz about the place, yeah?”

No. London stinks. The only buzz I ever heard was from the unwelcome fly in my over-crowded train carriage, which is now determined to find its way down the back of my shirt. I’d try to shake it off, except there’s no room to move my arms and I’ve been without satisfying human contact for so long that I prefer to close my eyes and imagine that the uncomfortable tickle is the hot breath of a beautiful girl making the hairs on my neck stand on end.

I did not take this photo myself

Pathetic? Absolutely. But what do you expect? From the day I was born I’ve been conditioned to ignore life’s stark realities, trained to obscure uncomfortable truths, and long for things that aren’t really there. I blame advertising. I blame videogames. I might as well blame the parents while I’m here.

In truth we’re all as guilty as each other in this, especially people like me who somehow think they’re helping to solve the problem by whining about it. We all buy into a convenient lie like “the bankers did it”, or rally behind a cause so as to shout “boo to capitalism/war/God [DELETE AS APPROPRIATE]”, or maybe write a couple of hundred words that say “hey, I can state the obvious. Now can you please pat me on the head and tell me I’m smart?”

Don't worry, I haven't flipped out, I'm taking deep breathes and there is no depression. I'm sure if I go back to managing my imaginary football team everything will feel OK again.

Yep. This is OK.

The Golden Rule

Whenever the headline of a newspaper article or editorial asks a yes/no question, the answer is invariably 'no'. The "?" at the end is a cunning ploy that allows the writer to have a more eye-catching headline than their article deserves. Remember to just say "no" and move on.

“Excuse me, would you mind turning that down?”

It’s the first day of the first working week of 2009. It’s snowed overnight and the trains are, with depressing reliability, being delayed and cancelled. The queue at the ticket office stretches out onto the road. I’ve overslept, and had time for neither my first cigarette nor my first coffee of the day. When a train finally arrives, it’s groaning under the weight of too many passengers.

My sole asylum on a nightmare morning commute is music. Even when your face is being pushed ever closer to the armpit of the fattest man in the carriage, a good tune can win the battle against rising waves of nausea. It drowns out the woman on the phone who’s desperate to bore everyone around her with the sordid details of “how mashed” she got last night. You can shut your eyes and become oblivious to the young loved-up couple who have obviously just spent the night together and are now whispering sweet nothings in each other’s ears. The spoilt, shrieking, attention-seeking child who’s desperate for just one more Chocolate Button might as well not exist.

Except it seems the laws of rail carriage etiquette won’t allow me any sanctuary. To have your music player at a volume that successfully drowns out the rabble will always draw at least a couple of disapproving glances, and as often as not, some self-righteous busy-body will tap you on the shoulder and ask, “can you please turn that down?”

I realise that being forced to listen to the tinny beats blurting out from the headphones of someone nearby on a train can be a little irritating, and I’m entirely in favour of ‘quiet carriages’ on public transport to help those with zero tolerance of personal stereos and mobile phones. But when I’m NOT on a quiet carriage, why is it that Mr Self-Righteous is so willing to ask me to turn down it down, but doesn’t tell the much noisier and more annoying Miss Gossip sitting opposite to shut up? After all, it’s not me who’s making the Chocolate-Button-obsessed kid cry with the graphic and terrifying details of my sex life.

a picture of some poor quality earphones

Admittedly, some of this stems from the cheap, noise-leaking earphones that Apple give away as standard with their ipods. Mr Self-Righteous no doubt tells himself that he’s doing me a favour by getting me to turn my music down, as he’ll be saving me from tinnitus in middle-age. But the truth is that even with the best hearing in the world, you often need an ipod turned up to near maximum to hear anything over the rumbling of a tube train, so useless is the noise-proofing in their earphones.

Okay, I could just buy better earphones, but that’s not really the point. The quiet ‘bum-bum-tish’ of my music gets treated like it’s the sole cause of all Monday morning commuter misery, when really it should rate pretty low on the bothersome-ness scale. And if I could, I’d happily read a newspaper in absolute silence, except that cramped conditions and an inability to fully open my eyes for the first hour after waking make it impossible. So can’t we learn to live and let live? If I can resist telling Mr Self-Righteous that his smug, self-satisfied face is a massive nuisance to my eyes, won’t he learn to tolerate the mild irritation I’m causing to his ears?

Minor personal loss > Major international tragedy

On the eve of 2008 (i.e. 369 days ago), our family dog paid his last ever trip to the vet. He’d been in steady decline for the previous year and putting him down was undoubtedly the kindest thing to do, but it was nonetheless a very sad occasion. The women were weeping, the men’s stiff upper lips were quivering, and more than once it was remarked that, “this truly feels like a death in the family”.

Around three years earlier, on Boxing Day in 2004, a major tsunami hit the South Pacific. Several thousand people died, whole communities were wiped out, and families were left in pieces. It was arguably the most devastating natural disaster since the Tangshan earthquake of 1979, and a humanitarian crisis was left in its wake.

My brother, during one of those drunken existential conversations that seem somehow unavoidable during the festive period, recently pointed to these two events and declared that because he was more upset by the death of an elderly dog than the deaths of thousands of fit and healthy human beings, the human race must be shallow and self-interested by nature. He’d had personal experience of the dog, so he would dearly miss him; by contrast, although he could recognise the inherent tragedy of the tsunami, he felt little or no emotional response to it. Those deaths would have little or no impact on his life, so just like every other callous and selfish human would, he quickly forgot about it.

Now, it should go without saying that we simply wouldn’t be able to function if we were too good at empathising with our fellow man, and it’s both healthy and necessary to be able to maintain some emotional distance from the world around you . If you’ve just become the sole surviving member of your family it’s understandable that you might spend a number of weeks or months grieving; but to do so after watching the ten o’clock news would make you utterly dysfunctional.

In fact, it's possible that some super-empathetic variant of Homo sapiens did once or might one day exist. The trouble is that they’d be utterly doomed as a species from wasting their energy crying or rejoicing over events that didn’t affect them. The process of natural selection that has (arguably) made the human mind what it is today, has nothing to do with ‘good’ or ‘evil’, ‘selfish’ or ‘selfless’. It is simply that which works that survives and thrives.

Those who are particularly lacking in empathy we generally call sociopaths or psychopaths. It’s been argued by some that these marginalised individuals are in fact incredibly well adapted for the current evolutionary scene. By not wasting energy on the problems of others, and not feeling at all guilty about exploiting other people, they’re often incredibly successful resource gatherers (i.e. businessmen). Similarly, although in most societies it's fairly taboo for men to indulge in one-night stands, impregnate women, and then leave them to bring up a child alone, this is the sociopath’s preferred method of operating. By ignoring the stigma that usually surrounds fathering many children by many different mothers (especially without providing any financial support), the sociopath can potentially enjoy the kind of ‘reproductive success’ that would put Genghis Khan to shame.

Of course, the success of the psychopath's adaptation depends entirely on there being a large majority of those who play by the rules. If everyone was out for themselves and was happy to exploit or manipulate at every opportunity without remorse, we (as a species) wouldn't be able to do all the useful things that come about through mutually beneficial cooperation.

Oops. What's happened? Where did all this sketchy evolutionary psychology come from? And what have psychopaths got to do with anything? Oh yes! I was trying to show what amounts to an "appropriate" level of empathy. And I was saying in the most long-winded way possible that we should aim to be somewhere between psychopaths and the kind of gibbering wreck that cries when watching the news. And that that's nothing to be ashamed of. And...

...maybe I'll stick to posting Youtube videos.