Some uncomfortable truths here

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[Dad and I discussed this phenomenon quite often. I'm with the "silent minority" on this one.]

Elec Tel

Outpourings of grief that hide an inner emptiness

By Theodore Dalrymple (Filed: 20/08/2002)

It goes without saying that the abduction and murder of two girls is a truly appalling crime, and that their parents must be inconsolably distraught: but we in Britain seem entirely to have forgotten that what goes without saying should also hardly be said.

But there has, on the contrary, been a competition in the press and the broadcasting media, from people who are almost intruders into the private grief of those involved, as to who can express his distress most forcefully, as if depth of feeling were always proportional to vigour of hand-wringing. The logic of the arms race applies, and now no one dares admit in public that, despite this horrible crime, he will still eat his dinner and enjoy it.

A visitor from Mars would surely by now have noticed the atmosphere of bullying mawkishness that has prevailed in this country since the disappearance of the girls, not dissimilar in quality to that which prevailed after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. Indeed, the story demonstrates how far Britain (if not the entire world) has undergone in the process of Dianafication.

The Martian would surely have noticed something distinctly tinny or ersatz in the outpouring of grief - by people not connected to the tragedy - on both occasions. He wouldn't have to be much of a psychologist to suspect that the vehemence of our anguish hides a profound inner emptiness.

People try to reassure themselves that they are capable of real feeling by the extravagance of their expression. And a diet of constant televisual sensation has rendered them susceptible to gusts of intense but shallow emotion.

The Martian might also suspect that this vile crime had been turned into something of an entertainment, one that served the purpose of uniting the nation as the World Cup - briefly - united it not very long ago. Here once more was something on which every English person could agree. The killing of the two girls was unprecedentedly despicable.

Our extra-terrestrial observer might likewise, if he knew us well enough, detect an uneasy sense of guilt in all our protestations of concern. He would know the extent of the English neglect of their children. He would know that prisoners, for example, who proudly announce that they would kill any child molester who crossed their path, are themselves more often than not abusers of children by proxy: that is to say, they abandon their children, and the mothers of their children, to the tender mercies of a succession of stepfathers.

They cannot even claim that they are unaware of the connection between the abandonment of children by fathers and the subsequent abuse, both physical and sexual, of those abandoned children. On the contrary, they know it only too well: but yet they persist in their abandonment.

The truth of the matter is that, for the most part, they do not care in the slightest what happens to their children, at least once they are out of sight. Actually to care for their children would impose limits on the satisfaction of their whims, in other words would represent the discipline of duty: and for this they are not prepared. They want to keep all possibilities permanently open.

What is true of prisoners is true of an uncomfortably large and growing proportion of the English population. Mothers who have separated from the fathers of their children often put the interests of their latest boyfriend far above those of their own children, whom they will expel from their homes at the boyfriend's behest. Blood may be thicker than water, but lust is much thicker than blood.

It is to the section of the population that is particularly liable to abuse its children that the sickliest expression of concern for the girls, and the shrillest expressions of outrage at their murder, has been principally directed.

Sentimentality - false sentiment - is not only the simulacrum of feeling that tries to fill the vacuum left by indifference; it is also an evasion of moral responsibility. It allows people to imagine that they are virtuous simply by expressing the emotions that are deemed to be correct in the circumstances, but it demands nothing of them, no sacrifice in the name of duty.

Only in a country as scandalously neglectful of its children as England could there have been such a morally redundant outpouring in a case such as that of these two girls. As for the likely official response to the case, it is likely to pander to the shallowest of emotions: to do otherwise, to tackle the real root of child abuse, insofar as such child abuse is preventable by political means, would require moral courage of a type that is conspicuously absent from our entire political class.

The Dianafication of our emotional life, as exemplified by the response to the abduction and murder of these two girls, marks a deep shift (for the worse, of course) in our national character. It wasn't very long ago that expressions of extreme emotion were regarded as anti-social: indeed, my older patients still cleave to this view, which is what gives them such dignity and permits them to overcome so many real tragedies of their own.

We have been taught that, on the contrary, the expression of emotion - any emotion - is better than its repression. Emotion is regarded like pus in an abscess: if it isn't let out, it results in the emotional equivalent of blood poisoning. This is destructive of all finer feeling. It is destructive of nuance and subtlety. It is an invitation to crudity, vulgarity and shallowness. It means that people are regarded as feeling most who speak loudest and longest, which not surprisingly results in a universal shouting match.

As usual, Shakespeare understood perfectly, though we are increasingly unable to learn anything from him. In King Lear, Kent warns Lear against the folly of mistaking high-sounding words for emotional truth. He takes the part of Cordelia, who has refused to exaggerate the depth of her filial affection:

Thy youngest daughter does not love thee least; Nor are those empty-hearted whose low sound Reverbs no hollowness.

The hollowness of modern Britain could hardly be greater. We are a nation of Lears, minus the tragic grandeur.



-- Anonymous, August 20, 2002


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