Sleepwalking into evil

Here in the West, we are all of us guilty of it, and there’s not a lot most of us can do about it. In my lifetime, I have worked for some of the more malign corporations in the world in order to feed my family, and while this requires a significant amount of double think on my part, when push comes to shove, it only serves to make those who have to partake an increasingly cynical bunch.

Watching Hop yesterday with my daughter, starring a happy-go-lucky Easter bunny voiced by Russell Brand, I took objection to the film’s portrayal of the saccharine confectionery industry staffed by bunnies, rather than third world farmers, while simultaneously Brand waxed lyrical about religion on Twitter. Whatever our principals, we are all of us powerless in the face of a paycheck.

Yet, while I count myself as irreligious in many respects, I do stand by that one big principal expounded by the real star of the Easter myth – that being: do as you would be done by, or stand up for the little guy. It’s a principal that Brand, through all his ad hoc rantings seems to stick fast to – a Liberal Democrat ethos of realising that everyone’s better off the more equal we are. But even Nick Clegg, it seems couldn’t stand up to abuse victims in the face of his own calling to power and the stronghold then exhibited by the late, hated Cyril Smith.

The fact is, however noble your personal views, they falter in the face of a threat to your own ambitions. And this is the cloche the western world has us under. By removing personal power by driving down incomes, it makes sense just to keep one’s head down and get on with it, rather than risk putting your head above the parapet with an opinion that might threaten your bland, corporation friendly views, and get shot down – or worse – made redundant for it.

Twice I stuck my neck out this weekend on Twitter in defence of the little guy and twice I got roundly abused for it. Once, with one time Celebrity Big Brother commentator and Sun columnist Jamie East who accused a waitress of bad service who later left in tears; the second, about my probably misguided, though still perfectly understandable fears about the Large Hadron Collider. In both cases I got panned for having an unpopular opinion. If there had been public docks, I imagine the mob response would have been to gleefully throw rotten tomatoes at my face: for one, having the gall to suggest that poor service might be improved by better wages, and second, that there might be  a very good reason why the minute black holes that are apparently created all the time in nature might have a good reason for not being created down here on earth. It was just an ill-informed, though totally reasonable opinion. These are trite examples, but it is symptomatic of a wider malaise.

Many of us feel like our voices don’t matter. That we can be proved wrong, whatever our personal experiences. I have very good reasons for distrusting the medical profession and wider scientific community, for example – and I know this is feeling shared by many ASD parents who feel the medical and scientific community won’t listen to their concerns – that broad evidence does not always answer personal experience, and even overwhelming proof does not always convince people to whom they feel all the evidence is to the contrary. As an ex-waitress, I know I wasn’t always able to give 100 percent ever single shift when I was paid fuck all and worked like a dog. 

So where can the little person turn, now that individual viewpoints can be swept so easily under the carpet, and when having an opinion that is disliked by many is akin to being put in a public stock?

We do not all have the power of Brand to take on the mighty (update 2025, how the mighty do fall!). So short of having faith that one day we may in fact be proved right (and to be honest, when it comes to the large Hadron Collider, I’m an perfectly comfortable with being proved wrong) we have to place our faith in the hands of those in whom we legitimately distrust, be it a government with a track record of abuse, or corporations whose track records many of us knowingly spin. Can we really blame the distrustful for their paranoia, when many of us willingly go along with a situation that makes us uncomfortable because to stick our necks out would be to be trampled upon by a blindly following flock with no power to do anything other than follow the herd?

In the face of today’s information sodden, yet increasingly blinkered and hamstrung society, where greater awareness of issues is coupled with the knowledge that to change the status quo might actually harm your own situation, we all, as Brand is lucky enough to be able to articulate in his film – aptly entitled The Emperor’s New Clothes – must stand back in full awareness that something doesn’t feel right, but do not want to be the one who actually says something.