Thinking about society – a Sunday afternoon conversation in north London.
A symposium – of three men and five women, in their 50s and 60s, clinicians, managers, consultants in health and education.
‘You are not to write about us in the Sun.’
But what about putting you on a blog, right on the public/private boundary?
What is public and what is private information? We are preoccupied with inclusion and exclusion. We are struggling with changing notions of privacy – but is this just a generational thing – or a more seismic shift in our understanding of self?
As we get older, even facing retirement, we feel a kind of exclusion, but still looking to find ways to contribute. That is always going to be the way, sometime being on the inside, sometimes outside. A levelling out of experience can be very dull.
It is a fact, we think, that not everyone can do a degree in philosophy, but universities want to be inclusive, to give anyone that opportunity. Such democratic inclusivity comes up against our innate elitism, the secrets of our dark heart.
There are other times that we endorse a democracy of competence. A good mechanic is like a good GP. We all develop those competences that give us satisfaction.
But there is a nervousness about personal and professional boundaries. Patients google their therapists and perhaps that way catch a glimpse of their hedonistic lifestyle. And we feel betrayed by the false inclusivity of emails – and the lazy habit of copying everything to everyone.
What does it mean to google ourselves – to look to see how we seem on the internet? The rules are changing, uncertain, and make us unhappy. We don’t mind being known for our professional roles – but we don’t want other people to know our weight.
What happens when you put in the name – there is an anonymous process of selection. ‘We have tested this site and not found any significant problems. ‘ We have to accept that we choose to be part of this – there is a wish to be noticed, and not just for our professional roles.
There was always gossip. But that leaking of private information retained a certain exclusivity in its distribution – there were always those in the know. It was not broadcast in the indiscriminate way of the internet, with hundreds of thousands of hits on a prurient video. What then about the persecution of Big Brother CCTV– when even the parking of your car makes you paranoid? Now we are struggling with a new etiquette: just don’t do anything you don’t want other people to know about.
My definition of a celebrity goes like this: someone who prepared to live their private life in public– their sex life and their weight are for us to goggle at in the waiting rooms of our lives, reading Hello magazine. What is our interst in the Oscars –the frocks? or celebrating movies as art, something we can celebrate about America?
What other ways are there to know who we are? There is the archiving of memories. The British Library keeps tapes of distinguished p[eople talking about their lives but there are lots of examples also of random or ordinary reminiscence –oral history projects and Mass Observation. And there are new cooperative methodologies - for example, surveying the bird population. The problem for future historians will be too much data.
We all have the wish at times to find out more about origins, like a great-grandfather who came from Ireland or (for an Italian) an English grandmother! We want to be more interesting to ourselves, to make sense of fragmented identities, make a coherent history.
With the wars and migrations of the last century, there is inevitably dislocation,for example for those coming from countries that are no longer countries. We have a sense of the privileged arms of our families and also of peasant or yeoman stock. Historic distinctions leave behind very important hierarchies - think of Sephardic and Ashkenazi and Hassidic jews. We give value to the historic – what we hold on to from the past - as if it is a contemporary experience. But also those with an immigrant past are living with a successful story, a pride in achievement, having descended come from people who have been able to do dramatic things in their lives.
We could make associations to the dislocation, disruption and even violence in the adolescent experience. In a way that is reflected by the instant identity of YouTube, it is commonplace to observe, admire and envy transformations in one generation. [Think of the Oscar winner, There Will Be Blood]. Mostly, though, we are assigned a place and stay in it and statistics indicate that there is less social mobility now than before Thatcher and New Labour. What we are missing, though, is any of the old solidarity in relation to the bosses.
In a knowledge economy we don’t know when are we working or not – for example, reading a journal in the bath. Competence and celebrity get mixed up and become indistinguishable. We may idealise the skilled working class, David Beckham, and admire ‘Posh’ for her knowing send up of herself.
Very rarely is celebrity associated with genius – but there is Daniel Barenboim. To someone who went to his recent series of concerts, together with what he is doing politically, this makes him profoundly inspirational. We admire also his great courage. In a recent interview he was happy to talk about most things, but not that he fears for his life. He has managed his talent, from being a child prodigy to now, aged 65 – we think with some awe how he has lived up to his potential. We may see also how he uses his gift for a project – and how this makes him very different from your ordinary celebrity. Unless you think that it is enough that self-promotion is now the project: thinking of Posh and Becks again, he plays his football as best he can and she may also be in fear for her life, the target of stalkers.
If self-promotion now is the project, some of us are uncomfortable about putting ourselves out there. We are not the Beckhams, that’s for sure. Their celebrity seems empty but we keep reading the magazines.
Not everyone would agree, but you could argue that it is possible to use one’s ordinary talents to be extraordinary. Think, say, of the woman who reacts to a family tragedy by organising a tenant protest on an estate.
But what has happened to the projects we care about? Psychoanalysis, group relations, no longer offer the hope now for universal change, that the founding pioneers believed. These are projects that have become tired. We do not feel so courageous now – this is a sad thought but truthful. We still have some capacity to take risks and we still know what we believe to be the truth about things.
The projects are tired but they have not failed. Psychology thrives, professionally and culturally, educating us about emotional intelligence, even though it is coming on a bit too strong on the narcissistic side. You can’t compare Barenboim and Beckham.
While we have been talking, there has been a cup-tie being played. Suddenly there is a new enthusiasm in the room:
‘What is the score?’