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Why does it all end in tears?
Crying: The Natural and Cultural History of Tears by Tom Lutz
W. W. Norton, £18.95, 352 pp £15.95 (free p&p) 0870 155 7222
Ours is such a supremely self-conscious era, that it might seem that there could hardly be any aspect of human life which has not been anatomised almost out of existence. But, it seems, there is still one: crying.
"Perhaps no other fundamental human activity has received so little direct and sustained attention", says the American writer Tom Lutz, who has produced a natural and cultural history of tears. In fact, on the evidence of this book itself, it seems that a great deal of attention has been paid to tears, time out of mind, but perhaps this fascination has not been very sustained, or coherent, and certainly it has not been packaged in such a popular form.
Tom Lutz's range is enormous; he can do psychological, anthropological, historical, neurological, theological, sociological, physio logical, philosophical, literary, cinematic, arty and pop. He writes well, too, and has a light touch with complex theory, and a good eye for quirkiness, and the connectedness of things in general.
As Lutz points out weeping is universal among humans, and peculiar to us - claims that elephants, beavers and dolphins weep are quickly dismissed - but quite self-evidently, weeping has no universal meaning or function. It does, however, have universal fascination; we know and feel that it means something important, but we also know that it is almost impossible to know what.
Crying may appear to have the glamour of spontaneity, of artless emotional truth; it may appear to be something beyond conscious control and so one of the few windows into the soul. But you don't need to read poetry or philosophy to know that it is just as often ambiguous or even dishonest, like the mythical tears of the crocodile. What appears to be an overflowing of emotion is actually controlled, at least partly, at least sometimes, by convention.
The crying of a new-born baby is clearly not the same as the ululations of a paid professional mourner in the Third World; contrariwise the stoical dry eyes of a bereaved First World War father do not truly suggest less sensibility than the sensual, manly weeping of an 18th-century intellectual contemplating an elevating landscape. A woman may weep in public from frustration, or for emotional effect, but she may also weep entirely alone; these different tears have different meanings, and may feel very different to her.
Tom Lutz covers the strange variety of weeping very well; he writes of the 20,000 French knights of Childe Roland, in the 11th-century Song of Roland, all fainting and weeping together in grief, of recent American presidents, orchestrating their tears (and of Jacqueline Kennedy restraining hers), of the "Nabob of Sob" (the pop star Johnny Ray, later outsobbed by Elvis Presley) and of teenagers going time after time to see Titanic, expressly for the pleasure of crying. All this raises fascinating questions.
Where this book is unsatisfactory is in its answers. The philosophical section, as is the way with the philosophy of emotion generally, is frustrating and comes to no conclusion. The same goes for the body science of crying: as the author says, "the current state of physiological research into such matters leaves us with more questions than answers". Nobody knows, for instance, why women weep more than men, or why their tears are chemically different from men's, or whether tears are part of arousal, or part of relief. And so on.
An editor I worked for long ago said that all journalism falls into one of two categories - Why oh Why? or Fancy That! This book, which is very high-quality journalism, attempts both, but only really succeeds at Fancy That!
The Sunday Telegraph | Sunday, December 17, 2000 | Comments (0)
Our children should be taught it - but not like this
No one has ever called on me to launch anything, and I suspect no one ever will. However, if anyone ever does, I will know what not to do, simply from having watched the fiasco that is, these days, the Labour launch. Ministers' routine is as follows. Announce forthcoming, exciting new initiative or report. Explain that it will change practically everything and usher in a new, better Britain.
Arrive at launch, complete with cameras, press, other ministers, toadies and reliable claque. Suddenly discover that you cannot actually endorse said launch at all. Realise that you find it embarrassing. Notice egg on face, and retreat. In face of public outcry, issue statement of dissociation from project. Hope everyone will soon forget.
That is how not to do it. And that is what happened at the launch of the Parekh report, from which Jack Straw hastily dissociated himself. And that is what occurred again last week, at the Education Secretary's launch of exciting New Labour citizenship lessons.
The dizzying objective was nothing less than "a spiritual, cultural and moral renaissance". To be precise, it was David Blunkett's launch of an American school textbook, called Active Citizenship, which has already been used in a pilot scheme in 24 schools in this country. Those who follow the New Labour comedy particularly closely may remember that this book has been honoured with not one but two quotations from Mr Blunkett, including a warm commendation on the back cover.
The launch was not a success. Mr Blunkett was forced on to the defensive and actually admitted that parts of the book were "psychobabble". One can only wonder how he failed to notice this before he decided to launch or indeed commend it, and get senior Labour figures to appear in it. Mr Straw, also present, was silent, apparently unable to give the book the hearty endorsement that his presence suggested, or indeed any endorsement at all.
So, launch over, ministers are now dissociating themselves from their own initiative. Good citizenship, in my opinion, is the ability to notice such kinds of cynical incompetence in our politicians without losing heart and becoming entirely cynical about the political process itself.
Most reasonable people, and certainly most conservatives, have been understandably hostile to the very idea of citizenship lessons. It reeks of statism, intrusion, bureaucracy and ideological orthodoxy. The same people were equally against the parenting lessons bossily proposed by Labour in 1996.
However, in both cases I think there are strong arguments - for once - in favour of state provision. The proper people to teach these things, ideally, are parents, family and friends: beyond them there is, or ought to be, or was, a network of other people to advise and set examples. However, for the children who most need them, those people aren't there any more.
It will take years, if it is possible at all, to knit up the ravelled sleeve of society in those places where it has been torn apart. Meanwhile, children desperately need practical and moral guidance about how to lead their lives, especially the most difficult children from the most dysfunctional families. School is the only place where they can be sure of getting any. The problem is not with teaching such things in schools; public schools have indirectly taught manners and social responsibility for generations, with immense success. It is that most schools are state schools; it is unwise to trust the state in such matters, and many such schools have proved incompetent. And it is also that the subject matter proposed is usually so idiotic. Psychobabble hardly begins to cover this week's offerings.
The 12 key citizenship words, for instance, were Awareness, Concerns, Focus, Issues, Mission, Partners, Sharing, Sympathetic, Talking, Values No. I can't go on. The idiocy. I cannot count the sessions in which I have sat, amazed, watching well-meaning social services ideologues scrawl such verbiage on flip charts. It is a kind of national lunacy, affecting the whole public service sector. But one should not despair. It is a hopeful sign when a Labour Home Secretary and Education Secretary turn from such stuff in shame.
I believe that there could indeed be useful citizenship lessons for schools. They just need to be entirely different from what was proposed. They should be extremely practical and extremely simple, avoiding both ideology and, at all costs, group wittering, self-affirmation and role-playing.
There could even be key citizenship words, if people really can't do without them. We used to have such lessons at my evangelical school, and they were excellent. They simply explained how things worked, on the assumption that one had obligations to other people. If I were to adapt the most useful key words of those lessons, they would be Service, Manners, Government, Debt, Duty, Tax, General Law, Illness, Nutrition, Child Development, Work and Information.
The most important are Service and Information. Service would be about practical ways in which to be of use to other people; the assumption that it is necessary would be unquestioned. People, not least children, need to be needed; it encourages self-respect as well as consideration.
Equally, information, and how to get it, is a powerful tool that prosperous people take for granted; neglected, undereducated teenagers, who need it more, have little idea of how to find out things they need to know, and very little confidence to try. I am beginning to understand the appeal of launching new initiatives; at least, I know how not to.
The Daily Telegraph | Saturday, December 16, 2000 | Comments (0)
The arrogant folly of trying to nationalise parenthood
One of the many awkward facts of life that progressives refuse to confront is that some problems are truly insoluble. Some conflicts of interest cannot be resolved. Some irresistible forces do come up against immovable objects.
To call on the Government to "do something" is merely to trouble deaf heaven with one's bootless cries; for the Government to imagine that it can do something, and then proceed to try, is either useless, or, more likely, worse than useless. I am thinking of the tragic conflict of interest between mothers and children, and the Government's ill-judged attempts to do something about it, as set out in this week's Green Paper on working parents.
The painful truth is that children need and want their mothers, but mothers either need or want to work. Whatever happens, there is sacrifice one way or another. If mothers are to work, they have to abandon their children, more or less. They have to hand them over, more or less, to someone else to bring up.
For most mothers, this arrangement is unlikely to be satisfactory; the few really good nannies who exist are available only to the rich, and good nursery nurses, au pairs and childminders are in extremely short supply. The rest are not good and the training schemes, for what they're worth, cannot possibly meet the huge demand for childcare.
There is plenty of evidence to suggest that day nurseries are often bad for babies and young children. The minders tend to be underqualified, if qualified at all, extremely young and given to absenteeism, according to recent studies by the National Children's Bureau. It found that toddlers are often frightened, neglected and withdrawn, as well they might be, when they're put on the pot by one woman, wiped by another and dressed by a third.
This is the cost, to many babies and children, of their mothers working. Equally, the cost of staying home, for many mothers, is also very great; they pay a huge price in frustration and lost opportunities, as well as in lost income and lost independence.
It seems to me that there is nothing a government can do to solve this conundrum, other than to offer perverse incentives in all directions, which only make things worse. That is what Labour has been doing. This makes its preposterous claim to call itself the party of the family, in an attempt to steal this title from the Tories, all the more ridiculous.
In truth, this Government is no friend to the family. At first, it jumped energetically on the "affordable childcare" bandwagon; in the Budget of March 1998, the Government proposed to offer low- and middle-income families "quality childcare", with payments of up to pounds 100 a week for childcare for one child, and up to pounds 150 for two children or more. What more obvious incentive could there be to go out to work, rather than stay home and run a family?
Now the Government has at last grasped the obvious fact that going out to work is difficult for mothers; it would be easier if they could stay at home a bit more. So it now proposes longer paid maternity leave, with much more money; new paid paternity leave; more rights to hold on to your job after having a baby; and more rights to demand secure part-time work. All this is to be incumbent on the luckless employer, who will be monitored and quizzed and generally harassed. "Statutory options may need to be considered to provide minimum standards," the paper says.
It is almost too tedious to consider the details of these silly proposals; their one redeeming feature is a new and surprising note of caution, not so far characteristic of this Government. But the problems are, after all, obvious, and have been duly pointed out by anxious employers and business associations.
All employers, particularly in small businesses, will be hit by big new costs in time, uncertainty, staff upheaval and administration; and this has come from a government that has already imposed 3,000 separate regulations on business since coming to power. The CBI has complained that 16 sets of red tape have added an annual pounds 13 billion to business costs over the past two years.
Quite apart from the damage to business, what about the damage to women workers? What more perverse incentive could there possibly be to avoid hiring women? Presumably, ferocious new legislation will have to be brought in to force employers to hire women of child-bearing age.
This is what comes of presuming to tinker with the intractable. As for the interests of children and babies, none of all this will make much difference to their continuing neglect. Just as a puppy is not just for Christmas, a baby is not just for maternity leave; children need their mothers' presence and guidance for more than a few months, and older children need it more than new-born babies.
The unpleasant truth is that there is an obvious connection between mothers' work, children's neglect, the breakdown of the family and social disintegration, especially among the low paid. An honest government would confess that, in the face of such complexity, since it is damned if it does something and damned if it does not, it is best to do nothing.
Left to themselves, employers and parents might actually arrive at some workable compromises; many already have. There are many things that governments cannot and should not try to do: they should certainly not try to nationalise parenthood.
The Daily Telegraph | Saturday, December 09, 2000 | Comments (0)
A sense of patriotism might have saved Damilola Taylor
So, at the age of 47 and a half, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom has discovered patriotism. He has suddenly understood how important it is, or rather how useful it could be. And he has suddenly appointed a minister for patriotism. This preposterous spectacle, more than anything else I can think of, encapsulates what is wrong with Tony Blair and the Blair ascendancy in general.
It is not merely naive, cynical, intrusive and insolent; it is mistaken. The patriotism that Mr Blair suddenly feels must be captured and hitched to the Labour bandwagon, to help haul it through its current difficulties, has long since bolted; the minister for patriotism will find that his job consists merely of closing the stable door. Patriotism cannot be had just for the asking; it is a deep feeling that either is or isn't there. Mr Blair might just as well create a minister for falling in love: the very appointment of a minister for patriotism means that it is too late.
Patriotism in this country is dead or dying. The subtle combination of thoughts and feelings that go up to make such a strong but elusive emotion has received too many insults to survive. Many of those insults have come from this government, from the Labour Party over the years and from socialism generally; others have been more global.
Whichever the reasons, however, those in this country who once understood and felt patriotism have been overtaken by an overwhelming sense of loss; the asinine insolence of Mr Blair daring to lecture us about national identity, when he has done so much to undermine it, merely adds rage to loss. Others, and particularly the young, seem to feel nothing but indifference to the idea of patriotism. Mr Blair and his trusty ideas team, otherwise known as the Performance and Innovation Unit, have got this wrong.
All the same, they do seem to be aware, in their crude, belated sort of way, that all is not well with our sense of national identity. They even suggested earlier this year that it may be in terminal decline, along with traditional values.
However, their own idea of national identity is lily-livered, to put it mildly. Michael Wills, the new patriotism minister, said this week that he would pick out openness, fair play and decency and the work ethic as quintessentially British qualities. Mr Blair himself said earlier this year that "few would disagree [sic] with the qualities that go towards British identity qualities of creativity, built on tolerance, openness and adaptability, work and self-improvement, strong communities and families and fair play " This is just verbiage, either empty or obvious.
Someone should point out to Mr Blair, in plain English, what patriotism is - or was. Patriotism has to do with love of place, pride in a common past and a common culture, and love of a shared identity. Identity (need I say) comes from the Latin word for same; identity has to do with a sense of sameness and of the same shared values.
Without shared values, there can be no community, no sense of belonging and responsibility; in effect, without patriotism, there can be no community. Even Mr Blair is on to this now. Anyone can be a patriot. Any immigrant can come here and belong here, as I did, but to belong one must subscribe, in large part, to the common culture of this country - the culture that draws immigrants here in the first place.
All this ought to be obvious, but for a long time not only patriotism, but even the idea of a common culture, has been denounced in Britain; it has been belittled and derided in the name of the doctrine of multiculturalism.
Multiculturalists have actively tried to shame people out of their patriotism; they have called it racist. They have argued that all cultures are of equal value, except possibly the host culture, which has been racist and supremacist even in seeing itself as the "host" culture. This tragically misguided view saw its silliest expression in the
Parekh report, which said that "immigrants owe loyalty to the British state, but not to its values, customs and ways of life".
Perhaps it was as well that the Parekh report was so alarmingly extreme. It awoke the Government, though probably too late, to the dangers of breaking up our shared culture. I find it interesting that quite a few British multiculturalists are turning revisionist and beginning to describe themselves as post-multiculturalists, and starting to look, in their irritating phrase, for "the ties that bind". These ties have been ignored for too long by progressives of every kind who, in their attempts at social engineering, have failed consistently to understand the subtle, fragile bonds of community.
What is most striking about the estate in Peckham where Damilola Taylor was so shockingly murdered this week is its total absence of the ties that bind. Into this dreadful estate, and many others like it, has been thrown a hugely various collection of people from all over the world, from all kinds of different cultures, speaking tens of different languages; the place has been turned into a monstrous Tower of Babel, with a ceaseless incoherent yammering, speaking only of mistrust and misunderstanding.
How could there be any community? How can multiculturalism foster community? The miserable inhabitants of these ghettos are all victims of a terrible moral failure in this country, a failure of understanding, of conviction and of political leadership.
No wonder patriotism has fled. What is there to be proud of?
The Daily Telegraph | Saturday, December 02, 2000 | Comments (0)
