The Times - UK (2020-11-26)

30 1GM Thursday November 26 2020 | the times

Comment

R

aise a glass to Gordon

Chesterman of St Edmund’s

College, Cambridge — an

aesthetic rebel against civic

clutter. A month ago the

city council put up a black metal pole

outside his front window. It was

designed to hold a tiny sign about

parking restrictions. Rather than

waste his energy grumbling to

unresponsive authority, Mr

Chesterman popped out to a garden

centre and (clearly a nimble chap on

a ladder) enhanced the pointless pole

with curly decorative brackets and

hung on them two bird-feeders and a

rather smart clock-barometer.

Neighbours seem pleased and have

suggested further installations: a

dovecote, a faux-Victorian gas lamp.

He may put up a Christmas tree and,

later, designate it a maypole.

He might not, he admits, have

done this without the tedium of

lockdown. And certainly one benign

result of this year’s house-arrests was

giving us more time to stare at the

built environment and think

independent thoughts. Not just

about the view from our front

window, but the echoing streets. A

dutifully exercising walker could, for

once, calmly contemplate the urban

landscape without the blurring effect

of moving crowds and notice how

any grace, historic or modern, of the

average town street gets blighted by

an officious visual assault. Like

ill-carved initials and toxic fungi on

some noble tree, there sprout

multiple unnecessary signs,

injunctions, posts, hideous bollards

and fussy barriers.

It was 15 years ago — 15! — that

English Heritage, having recruited

Bill Bryson, published a report

called Streets for All and pointed

out how much of this stuff is

redundant, chaotic and ugly. In the

same year, the Council for the

Protection of Rural England

launched a “clutter challenge” to

rural authorities to audit their

own stock of markings, fancy kerbs

and street furniture, and cut it back.

Only two authorities ever signed up,

and creeping suburbanisation

proliferates still.

Legible, low-key and local street

signs not only improve the look and

character of a place but enhance the

concentration and respect of drivers

passing through. Barriers between

pedestrians and traffic have not

proven useful: they often encourage

higher speeds in cars and lorries. All

this has been repeatedly shown on

the continent, and in a few places

here with “shared space”. But even as

I write, I bet some council is blithely

signing off on a lump of pointless

metal to bolt on to another pole.

Signs, posts, bollards

sprout like toxic fungi

on some noble tree

You’ve got to

be bored to

ride on the

Boris bubble

Janice Turner Notebook

Idea that defined the West now threatens us

A new book says individualism drives western success. But it’s rapidly turning into narcissism

everyone’s interpretation of reality is

as valid as anyone else’s. This

thinking lies at the heart of our

modern culture wars, which are

defined not just by clashing opinions

but clashing definitions of reality

itself.

Those culture wars, of course, have

been exacerbated by the advent of

the internet, an information

revolution at least as psychologically

significant as the invention of

printing. Where the printing press

democratised the interpretation of

information, the internet offers us

the opportunity not just to interpret

information but to mould it however

we want. The conspiracy theorist

who claims to have “worked things

out for myself” is the ultimate

intellectual narcissist. But we are all

implicated: social media companies

flatter us with algorithmically

curated timelines which reflect our

own views back at us. This is not just

individualism but a form of infantile

narcissism which allows us to

perceive reality as nothing more

than an extension of ourselves.

If you’re looking for a way to

understand the turbulence our

society is going through, then

Henrich’s take on individualism is

the most compelling I’ve read this

year. With western individualism in

crisis, it’s hard not to notice that the

rising power in the world is China, a

much less individualistic society.

Individualism does not guarantee

geopolitical dominance. It was a

formula that worked for the West for

a few centuries. The future may look

very different.

James Marriott is deputy books editor

Non-westerners usually drew

everyone the same size whereas the

citizens of western societies depicted

themselves as bigger than their

friends. (“Americans,” a researcher

noted, “tend to draw themselves very

large.”) If that stuff sounds hokey,

think of the psychological gulf which

separates American politicians

debating questions of “liberty” and

“freedom” from Chinese leaders

devising policies to promote “the

harmonious society”.

Criticisms of individualism are

common across the political

spectrum. Left-wing writers point to

the damage caused by unrestrained

economic individualism. On the

right, commentators lament the

decline of the family. Donald Trump

highlights the danger of extreme

narcissism. In his long refusal to

concede the US election result,

Trump placed his own ego above the

democratic conventions that bind

American society. But the social

forces swirling beneath Trump are

more dangerous. The emergence of

an extreme intellectual individualism

is one of the most significant dangers

of our era.

Henrich shows how, in the 15th

century, the advent of printing

presses accelerated individualism by

enabling men and women to

interpret scripture for themselves

rather than rely on the teachings of

religious gatekeepers. This tendency

towards intellectual self-

determination is a theme in the

history of western culture and one

that reached its dangerously logical

conclusion in the postmodern

philosophy of the 1970s which taught

that the truth is relative, and

T

here’s an endearingly

ambitious academic

discipline called

cliodynamics which aims to

predict the rise and fall of

civilisations using mathematical

modelling. Cliodynamics has been in

the news this year because its most

famous proponent, Peter Turchin, a

biologist previously famous for

studying the population dynamics of

pine beetles, made a series of

predictions a decade ago that an “age

of discord” was due to begin in 2020.

Reluctantly, because I like a big

sweeping theory, I’m with Turchin’s

sceptics who argue that humans are

a great deal more complex than pine

beetles (well, most of them) and are

therefore much harder to predict. I’m

not sure general laws of civilisation

can help us make sense of this messy

and frightening year. But I do think

it might be possible to spot themes.

Joseph Henrich is a Harvard

anthropologist whose new book The

Weirdest People in the World

identifies one big theme in western

civilisation: individualism. Henrich

argues that the unusually

individualistic psychology of

westerners makes them radically

different to most other societies in

the world. This might sound trite but

Henrich makes a convincing

argument showing how, over

centuries, individualism freed

westerners from the restrictions of

social networks based on kinship,

such as tribes and families. We

became more mobile, better at

exchanging ideas and more adept at

co-operating in large non-familial

organisations such as guilds,

scientific societies and nation states.

These changes fuelled innovation

and growth, propelling the West to

its economic, technological and

military ascendancy.

Henrich doesn’t speculate about

how the West’s individualism is

shaping modern history. But if you

buy his idea that individualism

defines western civilisation then it’s

not hard to speculate that the

individualism which once propelled

us to global dominance is the same

force now fracturing our society.

A battery of social experiments

illustrates the extraordinary

individualism of the modern West.

When asked by researchers to

complete the phrase “I am”,

westerners opted for words that

described their personal attributes

and achievements (“I am smart”, “I

am a lawyer”, etc). Others, by

contrast, referred to their family

relationships and social roles (“I am

a brother”, “I am a friend”). In

another experiment participants

were told to draw a diagram showing

their relationships to their friends.

Postmodern philosophy

of the 1970s taught

that truth is relative

Pointless street

signs are a blot on

the urban landscape

Libby Purves

A

mong the many things I

pray will end forever on

December 2 is having

nothing to look forward to

at weekends. With

exhibitions, films, shops, dinner with

friends, football matches and every

other manner of fun proscribed,

people plod gloomily around muddy

parks. “It feels like a 1970s Sunday,”

my husband said.

So in search of novelty, we cycled

miles east along the Thames’ south

bank where the river turns industrial

with great gantries, hard-hatted men,

JCBs, a chemical tang. I’d never seen

the Thames Barrier before: shiny,

silver and modernist, like leftover

chunks of the Guggenheim in Bilbao.

Close by, the Emirates cable car,

Boris Johnson’s white elephant

transport project from his time as

mayor of London, spans the water

like broken Christmas lights. Surely

it wasn’t still running? Corporate

offices on the north bank are ghost

towers. But yes, it was, a masked

cleaner swabbing each empty

compartment as it swung round.

We leapt on with our bikes and as it

rose above the river felt a sudden

holiday elation. I had a childish urge

to wave to passengers coming the

other way. Just two, who waved back,

beaming.

Such an oddly pointless and

frivolous contraption: few use it

to commute, the areas it connects

are too ugly for Instagram snaps.

You have to be very, very bored

to ride the Boris bubble. And

we were.

Take away

A

s we disembarked,

the sun fled and

the air turned icy,

leaving us hungry, frozen

and in need of a loo (public

lavatories, against

government rules, all being

closed). In summer it was

easy to escape house

arrest; now you must be

as hardy as an Arctic

explorer. So we rushed

back south through that

splendid piece of

engineering, the

Greenwich foot

tunnel, my husband

remembering how as a

child he’d hurtle down it,

shouting to hear the echo,

with his late friend Daniel. Shivering

in Greenwich market, we bought hot

noodles. “Take your food away to eat

at home,” ordered a bossy sign (oh,

do shut up). There were benches but,

of course, they’d been taped off. So

we sat on the filthy doorstep of a

closed vape shop and wolfed it down

like urchins. Six more days, one last

dreary weekend to go...

Keep typing

Y

ou’d hope that

working from

home would at

least end the dead

weight of

presenteeism. It’s bad

enough that younger

employees have to toil

in tiny bedrooms, never

seeing a soul. Surely they

could set their own

hours, go for the odd

run? But a

20-something in

finance tells me that

even though his

company is in idling

mode until January he

must still sit at his

laptop eight hours a

day eking out his few

allotted tasks.

If he chats to his

flatmate or watches

TV, he must

remember to jab

randomly at his keyboard now and

then. His bosses know not only when

he’s logged in but can count his

keystrokes. A colleague was sacked

for logging out after half an hour,

even though he was given nothing to

do. He says a friend has discovered if

he plays the same PowerPoint

presentation in a continual loop he

can watch Netflix while his boss

thinks he’s training. It’s the new

jacket on the back of the chair.

I spy

A

Zoom exercise class is about

to start and I have a choice:

“connect with video” or not.

I can see people I normally run

around the park with popping up in

their bedrooms or gardens. I can’t

help peering into their homes. Ooh,

he’s got a big kitchen, that’s a fancy

chandelier.

It is cheering to see familiar faces.

But do I let them see mine? The

truth is, I hate catching sight of

myself in my little video box, flailing

about, vest riding up. Or I’m

concerned the instructor will know

occasionally I return text messages

while doing sit-ups. And I don’t want

others to judge my house. I’m a

journalist: I prefer to observe but not

be seen. I join the meeting as an

empty black square.

@victoriapeckham

James

Marriott

@j_amesmarriott

t