I admit the blog I posted on Friday was a little incoherent. Because I don’t think I explained that it was really just a musing over what appears to be a connection between a retreat from the world and reactionary beliefs, and how I feel that I have seen myself wishing to retreat over the last couple of years (I even explained to my friend that I often find myself losing confidence when I write, and then proceed with the mere of hope of someone, with a little more intellectual heavy-weightedness, decoding it and letting it hatch it out properly into the world).
I think I was asking in the blog what conservatism (right wing beliefs and attitudes) is, and whether it is inherently bad.
Well, it goes against everything that could be characterised as a ‘Modern’ value; ie, progress, technological, intellectual, social.
However, since the beginnings of Modernity, an age of discovery, and improvements to life quality but equally one of chaos, crises and madness, the ‘Moderns’ and the ‘Conservatives’ have cancelled one another out to the point that they could silently agree to disagree, and actually join forces to prevent any genuine threat, such as a socialist one. Liberals and conservatives can argue until the end of the earth, knowing full well in their hearts that they couldn’t exist without one another.
But there’s the conservatism of those who hold political, economic, social power, and the conservatism of those who don’t.
For the powerless it’s a wish to preserve, and to keep the threats stirred up by ‘Modernity’ (or capitalism) at bay. It’s an anti-political politics, that wishes to be protected from it.
I spoke in the past blog about a shift occurring, at least here in the UK, that was accelerated by the pandemic; a shift from a society based around aspirationalist individualism, to one based around preservationist individualism.
Aspirationalist individualism could still be classed as Modern. Indeed, perhaps it was our last burst of Modernist ‘Future Shock’, in the brash, exciting, consumerist colours of the late 20th century, that now haunt us, like the run down shopping malls that were, for a moment, the embodiment of a luxurious future.
Capitalism, as the dominant force of Modernity, created crisis, but this was balanced out by the promises of Modernity, at times for a better society, and then for better individual opportunities to succeed.
It feels like the promises aren’t really believable anymore. Capitalism produced external crises caused by its rapacious need to expand, but it also creates a culture that keeps us in restless emotional crises, and the society of aspirationalism was about internally reprogramming our souls into non-stop go-getters.
Since the pandemic there’s been an implicit assertion that many are burnt out. Enough people saw a glimpse of a different sort of life, not as focussed on work, careers, or on competition between one another.
Before the pandemic there had emerged a contending promise, one recognisable from the early 20th century, of a ‘better tomorrow’ for the collective. It not only began to feel tangible, but necessary, not only in the face of the geopolitical and ecological challenges, but also because the aspirational promise was beginning to wane. Perhaps the symbolic first death knell of this promise (at least in the UK) occurred when Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg reneged on his promise to scrap student tuition fees, which was perhaps the catalyst for a what felt like an entire generation to become ‘anti-capitalist’.
Since that point, and in the aftermath of the intentional exhaustion (by powerful forces) of the energy that almost got the UK and USA their most left-leaning leaders in living memory, this ‘better tomorrow’ seems as far away as it ever did.
Because there is no socially-cohesive promise to believe in, many are retreating. They are retreating as much as possible from the emotional and physical trauma of the life of the careerist go-getter, and if they can’t because even bare existence has become way too costly, they are in a kind of quasi-spiritual retreat.
‘Mental Health awareness’, ‘quality time for myself’, ‘mindfulness’, none of which are bad, but are all signs of us finding solace by turning away from the world, putting our ’10 hours of relaxing rain to sleep to’ YouTube videos on.
I think my premise was that it is good that people are questioning the way work takes over our lives (even if they can’t physically work less hours, due to the cost of life), but that retreating into our shells, away from the world, is also potentially quite a conservative, reactionary thing to do. I ask if I am becoming right wing, because over the last few years I have found the state of the world, the constant demands to soul-search, and the competitiveness of things so much, that I was no longer thinking ‘I want the world to be different’, but merely ‘I want to feel better and that means not thinking about the world’.
Interestingly I have moved away to do seasonal work in a rural part of Cumbria, in an act that is kind of a retreat. However, in a remote place with poor reception, and no wifi, I’m starting to think about the world again, but momentarily without the exhaustion and guilt it used to cause.
Perhaps, just perhaps retreating doesn’t haven to be one-sided, politically. Although I haven’t thought about this enough to elaborate on right now.
Thanks,
John.
John B Ledger 