Pulling Different Ways
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I logged into Twitter over breakfast, as is my wont. It was the usual parade of mismatched stuff, mediated by the way I structure/restrict my timeline: new research on the log coffins of Whithorn and early Christianity in Scotland? Sure thing. But lurking in there was the screen-shotted tweet from the Westminster editor of the Daily Record.
Mr. Crichton is doing his job, reporting the statement, and I have no problem with that. What does irk me is the absence of any context other than ‘business backlash’, as if that’s the only thing that matters.
There’s no mention of the Arctic burning, for example, or international travel as a transmission vector for pathogens, both of which will have far more substantial impact on Scotland than (temporarily) shut airports.
Five years ago (All Made Out Of Ticky-Tacky ) I wrote here
There is a lazy analysis which takes the ideas of Thomas Kuhn from the Philosophy of Science and applies them to social science; but, even if viewed purely as metaphor, it seems to me that there is a paradigm shift going on and politics hasn’t caught up.
The core of Kuhn’s argument, which I first encountered in Philosophy Of Science 1 in 1978/79, is that we assess the world about us by reference to interpretive structures, which may be explicit or tacit. Eventually, anomalies and incoherences in our understanding of the world become too much, and the interpretive structure changes–a paradigm shift.
One of the more controversial aspects of Kuhn’s approach was his notion of incommensurability: the idea that ideas generated under one paradigm can’t be properly understood from the perspective of another paradigm. I’m a long way from feeling inclined to draw out the bones of an undergraduate essay on this stuff, which has been subject to criticism since its first publication. But, at a much more generic level, I think it is fair to say that the managers at the airport are operating under, or at least appealing to, a world view that is inadequate to changing circumstances.
In the context of climate change, let alone a global pandemic, the notion that the determinative factor in decision making is the impact on a business sector, that itself embodies a contributory factor to climate change, is absurd and anomalous. The paradigm is shifting. We are, as I said the other day in liminal times.
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The above all cropped up, in a different context, also suggested to me via Twitter: this article from Bloomsberg (From Leicester to Lisbon, Coronavirus Outbreaks Follow a Pattern). The article circles around something I’ve been aware of since first writing here on 15 March (Dear Diary) about my own privilege in this: although the virus does not discriminate in theory, in practice the impact in society has been asymmetric; it has disproportionately fallen on those least able to do what is required—socially distance and stay at home.
This pattern raises the question of whether governments are doing enough to ensure all citizens understand the basic precautions to take to protect themselves, and have the means to do so. It also underlines the failings of several European states to ensure that even the poorest parts of society have access to decent housing and benefit from job safety…
Europe’s governments are paying a steep price for years of neglect of these communities, which often provide a very cheap source of labor. That’s allowed a whole host of inequalities to build up in terms of education, job opportunities and access to housing and healthcare that have always been a threat to prosperity and social cohesion. The novel coronavirus is bringing such inequalities to the surface again, this time driving home how the vulnerabilities of these groups can be a threat to public health too.
Inequality is nothing new, of course, but its modern manifestation is also built into the paradigm, dominant since the administration of Margaret Thatcher in this country, that the determinant factor in pretty much anything is business need rather than social good. Or, perhaps better, that social good is defined solely by business need. This is, in essence, the feudal model and we are still peasants.
It is complicated, in the UK and US, now by governments infested by dogsbodies, lickspittles, the spinally deficient, and the corrupt. This adds further stresses into an inadequate system. The release of those stresses is not going to be pretty.
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Alastair Campbell and Nicola Sturgeon together is a combination that would have many running for the hills until the horror passed, but this is very good:
I cannot for one second imagine any senior Westminster (or Washington DC) politician talking this way.
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Music: Gil Scott Heron’s The Revolution Will Not Be Televised is also, in its own way, about paradigm shifts. His point was that the Revolution comes about because of a changed world view: a new notion of society and justice.
For 4th July here’s Gil on the Reagan administration:
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