Amongst all the Uncertainty…
Welcome to 2025.
At midnight on the 31st of December, like many of you, I hope, I clinked a glass of bubbles with my family. Our TV’s range of colours was given a full work-out as it shared the fireworks display in London.
Our dog, Arrow, glared out of the window, obviously wondering what wizardry was being wrought by his arch enemies, the squirrel population of our town. I know that his New Year resolution would be to redouble his efforts to get the blighters under control.
Listening to the happy chatter around me, I couldn’t help but wonder what humanity is doing (or allowing to be done) to the world.
In the Middle Ages in Britain, the populace understood that one did exactly what the country’s Sovereign desired, as interpreted by the local landowner or lord. Failure to conform with this simple common-sense notion would lead quickly to serious losses – losses of any rights, including freedom, assets and frequently, life itself.
Ordinary folks knew a fair amount about their immediate neighbours but not much about those in the next village and very little about their ruling nobleman himself, other than what they needed to know to follow his decrees. Of daily concern was the learning of techniques for agricultural production and care of stock. Knowledge was passed from father to son.
Their worries were few; they were significant, as noted, but their worlds were small. Unless the Sovereign decided to acquire lands abroad, so recruited an army, ordinary folk were unlikely to think about how other peoples lived in far away places. Their sources of information were channelled through whatever thugs their nobleman sent to convey his wishes or extract taxes.
As we begin 2025, I ask that you compare the manner of their existence with how we live today.
I do not intend this to be a history lesson – others can do it far better. But I do want to highlight this simplistic comparison. Henry Ford is often quoted as asserting, ‘History is more or less bunk’. Others, including Edmund Burke, an Irish statesman, are credited with maintaining the opposite. In fact, a Spanish philosopher, George Santayana, penned the aphorism, ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it’. And the official record of the British Parliament, Hansard, includes a 1948 speech by Winston Churchill along the same lines. ‘Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it’.
These days, our screens are filled with pictures of war, violence and suffering, usually in lands far away. But as we become inured to this daily diet of distress, our hormonal responses are ramped up. Levels of cortisol and adrenal response are heightened and stay higher than used to be the norm. So-called ‘Fight or Flight’ actions are closer to the surface than they ever were when we ploughed fields or shivered in hovels beside an open fire.
Every day, police forces deal with the results of disproportionate reactions to some imagined slight. A recent court judgement imprisoned a man the newspapers dubbed the ‘One Punch Murderer’. This was a young fellow who believed a harmless pensioner had ‘looked funny’ at his girlfriend as she sang in a karaoke bar. Was he drunk? Maybe. But what might have been ignored or drawn little comment twenty years ago, today triggers an extreme and violent response. And the rest of us sit around and mutter, ‘Isn’t that awful? Something must be done’.
Imagine, if you will, the Sovereign riding through a town centre in the 13th Century, guarded by Knights of the Realm. Someone in the crowd notices that his crown is askew. He shouts, “Was your ‘ead born a funny shape, then?”
People alongside laugh, but quickly stop. The Sovereign heard the shout. He reins in his horse.
“Seize that boy,” he commands. The lad is grabbed and taken away, his fate sealed. There is no right of appeal. No discussion or reasoning or possibility of seeking help from a higher power. This action puts me in mind of the French saying: ‘Pour encourager les autres’ (To encourage the others). Written by Voltaire in Candide (1759), it remarked upon the execution of Admiral John Byng after the 1756 naval battle of Minorca.
Compare information flows of the 11th through to the 15th centuries with how we acquire our general knowledge these days. We now have so much information available, that it is impossible to consume it all and arrive at a balanced judgement. The great technological marvels of the internet and algorithms deployed by social media sift through the vast quantity of data, selecting and amplifying similar content to what we have tutted about before. We are exhorted to ‘not believe what we see with our own eyes’. Instead, rabble-rousers tell us that all our problems will be solved if only they are put into power. (‘Vote for me and I’ll set you free’). The data firehose of what we still think of as ‘information’ has been curated to appeal to the Fight or Flight part of our consciousness, and if data cannot be found easily to support the particular line being pushed, then, these days, Artificial Intelligence can supply the demand!
A rebellious and ambitious lord might once have gathered his peasantry, armed them with pitchforks, spears and a few swords and attacked a rival – thus acquiring more land and workers to make it productive. His Knights might tell his labourers that the rival wants to take away their means of livelihood and kill their own lord. ‘Let us strike them before they can strike us!’ Was this ‘fake news’?
Think about this on larger scale. There is a part of France named Brittany. This is because it was once owned by Britain. No longer. Britain used to try to colonise major areas of the globe. During the last Century and more recently, it has been quietly withdrawing – from the Arab world, where it made a bit of a mess of things; from India, where perhaps its greatest legacy is the civil service; from Hong Kong, where Britain actually believed that China would stick to the terms of the agreement hashed out by Chris Patton and very recently, the UK agreed to abide by a ruling from the International Court of Justice to hand back the Chagos Islands to Mauritius. Many think this order should be ignored.
The largest island in the world (which isn’t a continent) is named Greenland - at the moment. It’s part of the Realm of Denmark and although autonomous, its 56,000 people are Danish citizens. It happens to have significant reserves of minerals and other assets which are currently eyed with envy by the President-elect of America. Canada, too, he wants as the 51st state. Trump is pretending that these lands should be handed over to the U.S. because they are vital to America’s national security and therefore to World Order. Likewise, the Panama Canal. Is he just saying stupid stuff to throw everyone into a tizzy so he can ‘cut a deal’? (Whatever that means). Does this presage changes in the world order? 2025 is going to be …interesting.
I look out at my currently frozen garden. Wet snow is falling in large flakes. I expect to awake tomorrow to a light blanket of white, which will fast disappear as the sun climbs or rain returns. At the moment, I own the garden. Come spring time, as temperatures rise, I anticipate resumption of my battle against the invading hordes of slugs. Right now, the garden is like Greenland. But in a couple of months, when the gastropod equivalents of the President-elect return to plunder, I shall mount the stiffest resistance I can. I may have to bring NATO-style weapons to bear on the threat. I’ll leave the squirrels to Arrow.
Happy New Year to you all. As the comedian, Dave Allen used to say, ‘May your God go with you’.
