Utopia

How it makes of your face a stone
that aches to weep, of your heart a fist,
clenched or thumping, sweating blood, of your tongue
an iron latch with no door. How it makes of your right hand
a gauntlet, a glove-puppet of the left, of your laugh
a dry leaf blowing in the wind, of your desert island discs
hiss hiss hiss, makes of the words on your lips dice
that can throw no six. How it takes the breath
away, the piss, makes of your kiss a dropped pound coin,
makes of your promises latin, gibberish, feedback, static,
of your hair a wig, of your gait a plankwalk. How it says this -
politics - to your education education education; shouts this -
Politics! - to your health and wealth; how it roars, to your
conscience moral compass truth, POLITICS POLITICS POLITICS


Carol Anne Duffy's right isn't she? Politics. Surely it is the most depressing most gob-smackingly awful part of our social framework, one that if you look at long enough, you feel your soul empty from inside of you, and your mind implode with a conflagration of cynicism and hatred. What is the point? None of them give a shit. None of them care what you think. None of them care what anyone thinks, even themselves. All they care about is themselves, and their self-interest and how to stay in power, or gain more - whatever it takes.

In our cynical world Duffy's poem seems anachronistic in its voice of protest. No-one does that any more do they, not seriously anyway. We have all studied twentieth century to know that it could it be a hell of a lot worse.

I sense this is to this general disinterest that Duffy is trying to speak, 'roaring' her message with a lyrical kick up the backside. 'That is what they want!' she is telling us. 'That is what they want you to think! If you sit back in your apathetic armchair all day long, then they are free to rent out their London town houses with their three thousand pound bird baths, and they can keep doing it for as long as they want!'
In this respect the whole expenses scandal might even be something dreamed up by the politicians to make people become even more cynical, to find them so repugnant that they will take even less interest. It is not as unbelievable as you might think.

Consider it like this. As the recession begins to kick in the politicians begin to notice that a lot of people a starting to take notice of politics again, and have become concerned once more about what they are doing, what they are saying, and what various bills they are putting through Parliament very few days or so. They caught a whisper on the street, that maybe these people wanted thinks to change, how the current climate was not to their liking as they queued outside the job centre on a cold spring morning. As a result their club might have to change its rules, and everyone quite liked the club as it was thank you very much. So in order to put people off, they made the club a place so despicable, so immoral in its behaviour, that all these campaigners for change would see what they got up day by day, and be so disgusted, so infuriated, that they would turn away and find something more palatable to spend their time on. For instance I know that estate agents exist as a species, but I don't want to spend more than a second thinking about them if I don't have to. If did I would probably end up storming into one of their offices with a sawn-off shotgun and...well, my mother always said that if you don't have anything nice to say, then don't say anything at all. I don't want to upset myself, so I stay out of it - I don't interfere with their rules, I just let them get on with it, and try and ignore as best I can. This is exactly the same consensus that politicians are aiming for - to upset the baying public so much, that they cannot take it anymore and just stay away, for the sake of their sanity if nothing else.

However, as Duffy would agree, do not fall into their trap! Don't do it. Don't just pick up the remote and change the channel. They are wrong are they? Okay, so what are they doing wrong? What should they be doing instead? Don't just shrug your shoulders. That's not the solution. Come up with an alternative! Come on. What would you do? How would you rule the world? What would be your utopia?

I've tried to think about this recently, and it's not as easy as you might think. Cynicism has numbed my political mind for so long now, that I haven't formed any kind of political voice since my mid teens. I've ambled along as the same pragmatic communist I have defined myself since then, and not thought about it since. Would I listen to a 15 year old tell me how the country should be run? No, of course I wouldn't. And yet that is exactly what I have been doing for the last ten years. Everyone has an opinion on this question - from Russian cannibals to catwalk models - but apart from a hatred of loud whistling, I had no real creed to speak of. So I have decided to figure it out, what my world would look like, how I'd form my Utopia.

The 20th Century has taught us one clear thing beyond any doubt - that man is selfish. We'd figured this out about 300 years before, or at least Thomas Hobbes had:

'the life of a man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, short.' Leviathan

But the 20th Century has told us that for absolute certain. We are lonely, greedy buggers.

Hobbes sees this as something of an innate faculty in man, like lying and aggression, and it is for this reason that we need to be coerced into some kind of a political organization. If we don't, we will end up living a life of constant war, and that is worse than any political party can muster, as much as the current Labour Party try.

You can only really agree or disagree with Hobbes, and for this reason it is a good place to start, however he does seem to miss one vital point from the very beginning. Man is innately selfish yes, but at the same time we have another innate need - the need to join together as a community. Selfishness is based around the want for success and achievement, and the fulfillment this brings, but these this means nothing if there is no-one else to share it with, no-one else to feel superior to, or to brag at. Without a community man's selfishness has no goal at the end of it and would thus be meaningless.

So we must form some sort of community in order flourish as human beings, and for a community to form there must have some kind of person, or organization in charge. If there is nothing to govern us, then we would just interact in anarchy and humans are incapable of living together in this manner. In the same way that we have to put rules on our lives - to form a self or a personality, we need rules and rulers to live in a community, to define ourselves as a common 'us.' If we do not do this we end up as slaves to our whims and desires - animals rather than rational animals, subhuman rather than human.

So what kind of community do we form - given that our current method of government seems to have capitulated into nothing but a morass of corporate backslapping?

Well, firstly it has to one that moves away from the 'greed is good' mantra of Gordon Gekko and New Labour's neo-monetarist economics. This has lead to the situation we now find ourselves in, which Duffy described so eloquently above, but to move elsewhere is not a simple matter, particularly in a society made up greedy buggers. We first need to recognize our faults for what they are, and where better place to start than the credit crunch?

With its culture of unfettered investment in hugely risky sub-prime loans, the credit crunch ahs told us one thing above all - that without regulation the market economy does not work. People simply cannot be trusted, especially when the dollar signs keep mounting up. To us that should seem obvious, but not to heads of American banks it wasn't. They adhered to Adam Smith's view in the Wealth of Nations, that the duty to their shareholders will mean that companies maintain a 'firm hand' over their investments, and will necessarily uphold a level of prudency in their dealings - and while this seems a decent maxim in principle, in practice it has proved hopelessly antiquated. This was a world of multinational investment, booming property and endless debt, where no risk was too great.

However, while it is all very easy to criticize, what we also know from the last hundred years of economics is that the alternatives do not work either. No matter how hard he shouts from the rooftops:

'Owners of capital will stimulate the working class to buy more expensive goods, pushing them to take more expensive credit, until debts become unbearable. The unpaid debt will lead to bankruptcy of banks, which will have to be nationalized and the state will have to take control, eventually leading to communism.'

Marx will not be right. Communism lead to economic lethargy and failed to recognize Hobbes cynical-but-just-about-true view of human nature.

The same applies to John Maynard Keynes. He can tell us from his Cambridge rocking chair that government intervention to manage demand in the economy as a whole - through taxation and state-investment - will keep the market stable, but we all know what the outcome was, as New Labour, the Tories and every Daily Mail in the country will testify. It is inefficient, inflationary and punitative to anyone who wants to make any money. If the reward for your decade of hard slog was a 50% tax hike, would you be knocking on your boss's door for free overtime?

So what? What do we do? How do we regulate ourselves when we are such selfish, lazy brutes?

The first thing I will say to this is that I am not going to begin advocating some kind of neo-communism. The market is right, it is the only way that humans can have the level of freedom they need - my fifteen year old self can sod off to the woods with a bottle of Diamond White. But in the same way there must still be some level of regulation, and this is what I want to concentrate on - the way to regulate the market. And in this respect I think Keynes is right, but completely wrong in the way he thinks it should be implemented. We need a government to intervene, but a completely different one to the one Keynes thought of, and in a completely different way. It involves a whole new social ideology for a start.

Every political party has one - an ideal world and the ideal person to live in the world. For the Conservatives it would be a family man, trying to make the most from his job, so he can look after his house, his car and his children in the best way he can. For Labour, well, it would be a recently unemployed factory worker, desperate to find a new job to fund his inner city apartment and evening class in communication studies.
They make us believe that this is the way to live, through rhetoric and subtle pushes in investment and taxation.

The best way to explain my political party is by telling you about their ideal person, and the way they expect the populace to live. Let's call his him Arthur.

Arthur lives in a fairly simple house or apartment with his partner (he is not necessarily married) and perhaps one or two kids. He works in a job designing backdrops for theatre productions that take place in the city square very weekend. These are funded by the state so he is essentially a civil servant. He was educated at university where he did quite well in English Literature. He goes jogging every other day and he is currently saving his money for a trip away to Nepal where he wants to climb to base camp of Everest.

The first thing to mention about Arthur is that he finds job very, very interesting. He gets every morning excited about what the day will hold and what new idea he will come up with next. The pay isn't great, but he doesn't care but this is what he wants to do.
The government is very supportive of the arts and a lot of Arthur's high taxes go on funding to support these, but he doesn't mind this either. It has given him his chosen career. This was exactly what he wanted to do from his first day at university, when his careers advisor told him about all the great jobs a degree in the arts could give you. As a result he worked hard all the way through his course, and this has held him in good stead when it comes to employment. He reads about the drinking culture in various books from the early 21st Century and can't believe how much time all these students used to waste.

Each weekend his performances get large audiences. Government funding towards the arts has caused the public interest so soar, and the quality is good. Not everyone has a job as interesting as Arthur - he knows that - but he knows that these people are able to cope with their boredom and frustrations by the artistic expressions that surrounds them, of which his play his just a small part. There are jazz bands in the coffee houses, art in the alleyways, free books on the High Street. He reads again how everyone used to just get drunk in pubs every weekend and cause the government no end of cost as a result, but now they don't. They are relatively happy. They do not need to spend to be content.

After each of his shows Arthur likes to join the crowds for a few drinks. He is interested in the public and what they have to think, and they seem to be interested in him. Everyone has an opinion and everyone is different, and so conversation is always lively. They tend to have a few drinks to wash it all down at the same time as well.

Once a week Arthur attends a one hour session in psychological health. It's free but it is compulsory. He feels fine, but he knows that this might not always be the case. He also knows that not everyone feels this same way, and that it is important to understand why. Depression in particular used to cost the economy millions, most of the time because people did not see it early enough. He knows that a lack of tolerance is what caused this, and feels happy that he now lives in an understanding society.

On the way back home from the pub Arthur notices two people stood down an alleyway having an argument, behind a large print of the Arnolfini Portrait by Jan Van Eyck. It seems to be something to do with the election coming up in a couple of day's time. Knowing that lessons in logic and dialectics in schools means that these two will remain calm and thoughtful throughout, he stops to listen in.

"The question is policy. Both the parties have their bonuses, but I think that the Platonic Democrats have the right way of doing it. They want to redistribute more of our income to the victims of irrational behavior, rather than the irrationals themselves. They want to help the less fortunate more, and I think this has to be right, don't you?"

"I disagree. I think the Nietzschean Logicians have it correct. They want to put more money into the police, to improve their skills in rhetoric, to make the discussion centres with irrationals more effective at explaining to irrationals the way our society aims to live. Once they understand it, they will be happy to agree, and the crime levels should reduce - thus rendering the need for more funding to the victims irrelevant."

The two men look at each other and smile.

"I think I'll put that on my voting card tomorrow."

"I think you should."

There is still a democracy, but again there is an emphasis on thought. On each voting card a hundred words must be written as to why the elector is voting in the way they are. It doesn't matter what they say - there is no practical way to look at all of these - but they need to think about it.

'Whatever happens, I trust the Platonists to make my decision for me. They are by FAR the best logicians in the land. If they can't make the correct decision no-one can.'
'I think you might be right,' agreed the other.

In this respect Parliament is not too different to how it is today. However, there a serious qualifications required to becoming a member, and standing for election. The must be been trained in logic and all methods of philosophy, in order to come to the best decision. They then have to publish these decisions in great length in the national press, in a clear and concise manner, so all can understand why they are doing what they are. There is thus still a democracy, but it is one based on initial ability to think.

Finally Arthur goes for a late night jog, with his jogging group. He knows the important of health and exercise. He was a part of the running society at university - where sport was actively encouraged as part of the curriculum. He turns up in his uniform from the performance earlier in the evening, as he did not have time to get changed. He is dressed as a bush.

Back in the old, savage days Arthur knows that people would have mocked him in the street for this, perhaps even become violent. He breathes a sigh of relief that he was not born back then and that he is living in a world where understanding is taught from a young age. He smiles when he remembers what they said - that there is not a 'correct' way to live, that there is a not a set moral code, that people not looked down upon for what they did and how they chose to live, that generally everyone is quite happy and secure and don't need to be manipulated by avaricious companies advertising for goods that they do not need.

He knows that his country is not growing in the exponential economic rate it was. He remembers how this caused the world economy to implode back in the early 21st Century. They all still want things, of course they do, but not to the extent of the depressed individuals of the old world, who had to want all the time for the economy to sustain its incredible reliance on demand and credit.

Arthur climbs into bed and tunes into the political channel on TV, to watch the last debates before the main election on Monday. They are all saying that we still need more education, that the arts still need greater appreciation and that people need to be encouraged to express themselves more. In opposition the other side said that science should be given grater esteem, although not to the extent that it was viewed to the answer to everything that it was before.
He liked watching these debates before going to bed. They were conducted in such a calm, relaxed manner that it sent him to sleep, and gave him lots of ideas to think about in the morning. As his wife said to him - 'Politics, politics, politics. Do we ever talk about anything else?'



So that's what I think, that's the world of my political views. We should still embrace capitalism, we should still embrace democracy, but it should all be operated in a more considered manner. The pressures of success, riches, power have caused man to act irrationally, and lead to a pressure cooker society where we are on the verge of explosion. That's the problem and that's why I think this is the solution. I appreciate that much of it is based on a very optimistic view of humanity, and is grounded in some of Nietzsche and Plato's more bonkers ideals, but hey, in a world where politics inspires Duffy to write as she does, where politics is so sickeningly depressing that most of us do our best to ignore it, it's got to be an improvement.



What do you think?