Samuel and Boris - Johnson's article on cunning

 One of the real pleasures in reading Johnson’s essays is the fact that each is fully dated. This means that it is possible to know that exactly 262 years ago he published an article in his Idler essay series about cunning.

He starts off by saying that “every man wishes to be wise, and they who cannot be wise are almost always cunning.” I am not a particularly cunning person, my face leaks my feelings and I am not the kind of person who is very good at thinking ahead or strategising - a chess master I am not, nor a layer and enactor of plans. I doubt I’m very strong on wisdom either, if my past decisions are anything to go on.

Johnson differentiates the styles of wisdom and cunning. Wisdom is represented as clear-sightedness with a certain goal in mind. There may be obstacles and detours from the straightest path but those detours are always made with the end in sight. Cunning is described as reactive, like wandering in a fog or dense wood, making split second decisions about real or imagined problems, paranoid as to the next one.

However, there is a place where (at present) wisdom seems to have no say and cunning be the only form of intelligence - our current parliament. It’s very likely that all parliaments have been the same but I can’t say I have ever, in my lifetime, known such a duplicitous, cunning bag of snakes as in the current Tory Party. Who knows where Samuel Johnson would stand on Boris and his ilk but it is interesting that two of his personality sketches seem to sum up two prominent members of our current political elite. These characters are Tom Double and Will Puzzle.

“Tom Double has formed a habit of eluding the most harmless question. What he has no inclination to answer, he pretends sometimes not to hear, and endeavours to divert the inquirer’s attention by some other subject; but if he be pressed hard by repeated interrogation, he always evades a direct reply.”

He certainly reminds me of someone….

Boris Johnson, a man who never-knowingly tells the truth and can lie in any direction at any time. Relying on naff jokes, the odd Latin buzz-phrase and an out of place non sequiturs (his trip to Peppa Pig World anyone?) the Prime Minister has actually hidden in a fridge to hide from answering questions.

Then there’s Will Puzzle who

“… prides himself upon a long reach. He foresees every thing before it will happen, though he never relates his prognostications till the event is past.”

Like Cummings, the supposed four-dimensional chess-master of number ten who has now turned his attentions to bringing down the Prime Minister he built up. He’s also a man who genuinely does go back into his blog to retro-actively put predictions of things that have already happened so he looks like he was right.

However, Samuel Johnson has some encouraging words about the limits of cunning. Ultimately, he sees cunning as self defeating, its reactive and paranoid tendencies mean that the cunning undo themselves and each other.

“The whole power of cunning is privative; to say nothing, and to do nothing, is the utmost of its reach.”

We can only hope as we carry on into this new year, some wisdom can be added to the qualities of out leaders, though where that wisdom is to come from, I’ve not much clue. 

Something Silly

Just one last 'comment' on the recent unrests before we get back to business.

There was a comment on US TV about how the UK looters were queuing...so I took that photo and noticed that the age range of the looters is indeed rather large.

yours

It's not economic poverty - It's cultural.

I’m hearing an awful lot about the rioters in England and their deprived backgrounds, that these riots are the howl of anger from the underprivileged deprived underclasses breaking free from their oppression. If that is the case then it’s a howl of anger that tries on the clothes before looting them.

I myself live in an area classed by the government in the lowest percentile of privilege. I grew up in a council house on a council estate, my family never had any money and I now have a job where I work for a small but at least reliable wage - a job it took me eight months searching to get. 

We couldn’t go on holiday when I was little, I was often in someone’s hand-me-down clothes and although I was lucky enough to get a sega mega-drive, it was second hand. This seems rather unlike the brand-named wearing, blackberry messaging rioters - who materially, seem to have it much better off then I did. What I did have as a child though, was books and attention.

This is not an economic deprivation that is the problem, people have lived without money proudly and safely for years. This is a social and cultural deprivation. There is nothing the government can do about solving this problem, they have been throwing money at problem areas for years - this is something communities can only sort out for themselves. 

Just looking at the way rioters ran off with items - the man on the radio interview who said it was mad not to go and get ‘free stuff’ when there was nothing that could be done about it. The same person who claimed the only reason to riot and loot was that the government had ‘lost control’ and so because it was possible, it should be done.

That is a culture that have learnt to respect authority but not to appreciate the concept of decency. That right is only right as long as there is someone to enforce it. That is the voice of greed, of a world where empathy is a dirty word - a sign of weakness and lack of conviction.

Now, there is a place where empathy can be grown, can be taught - and that is in a book. It was said by a Waterstones employee that “We will stay open and let them raid us, they might learn something”. It’s true. But it’s not dry fact learning. It’s learning empathy and the ability to see the consequences of actions, lessons that can be taught through fiction.

A novel encourages the reader to empathise with the characters in a way TV and film never can. We enter their worlds, we enter their heads and merely taking part in the world of a fictional character is humanising and empowering. How can anyone imagining themselves as, the kids in Narnia, Oliver Twist, even the horse Black Beauty (to take some names from the best selling books of all time) not be a little different, a little more open to the reality of other people’s experience, and thus a little more empathetic?

Also, books emphasise the importance of community and the actions of a person in the community.  There are rarely books about a lone person, they have friends, they have enemies, they have allies. Books teach us heroic qualities, to stand up for what is right, to stand up for the weak, to be brave in the face of danger - to work together. The Lord of the Rings books are some of the top selling books in the world, on cinema they are a riot of colour and texture with lots of fighting - but what are the stories about really? They are about small, insignificant people working together to foil a great evil, a point maybe lost on film but strong in text. 

If David Cameron wants to lead a ‘moral army’, that moral army are not the vigilantes roaming London with beery breaths, that moral army are the people with brooms clearing up. The small people in the crowd who are working together to rebuild, not the orcs destroying.

These riots have nothing to do with being poor, and to claim it is, is an insult to every poor person who didn’t go out and smash their town up. These people don’t need more shoes or TVs, they need books. Books, and attention...the riots gave them some attention, who’s going to give them some books?

To leave aside the past for a minute.

London riots have been rather crazy recently, felt there needed to be something to mark it...so here it is.