I head for the bar. My hands were shaking for a bit there but I think I can trust myself to hold a drink again without spilling it.
The bar staff must all be on a fag break or something. I turn my back on the bar for a moment, draw in a deep, clearing breath and take a good look round the place as the numbers start to thin out a little.
There must be some critical density of crowd that lets you see the most; too many people and all you can see is whoever’s right next to you; too few and you’ll see mostly walls, tables: just stuff. The population of people remaining in the room has probably approached whatever that ideal concentration is, and I take the opportunity to look about them.
All the local worthies, all the important people in town, are either still here or on their way out or not long departed. No schemies, no junkies, no crack whores, probably nobody unemployed or who genuinely has to worry about being out on the streets in any sense over the coming winter. Just the nice folk, those of the comfy persuasion. High proportion of sole owners, partners — junior or otherwise — shareholders, execs and professionals. People who don’t have to worry too much even in these financially straitened times. Well, how nice for us all.
Doesn’t make us bad people, Stewart…
Well, no, and we will continue to look after ourselves and to some extent those around us, in concentrically less caring levels and circles as our attention and urge to care is attenuated. The inverse square law of compassion.
But still not good enough. Not ambitious enough, not generous and optimistic enough. Too prepared to settle, overly inclined to do as we’re told, pathetically happy to accept the current dogma, that’s us. My parents wouldn’t lie to me; the holy man told me; my teacher said; look, according to this here
Ah, I think. I’ve got to
Comes with a high degree of preparedness to use mightily broad-sweep judgements, applied with eye-watering rapidity, to condemn or dismiss entire swathes of humanity and its collected wisdom, up to and including all of it. So, not for those deficient in sanctimony or lacking in self-righteousness; definitely not for the faint or smug.
I have stood in gatherings far more opulent and distinguished, more monied and glamorous, in London and elsewhere — though mostly in London — and felt something of the same corrupted disdain for those around me. It’s a fine, refreshingly cynical feeling in a way, and one that I know separates me from so many of my peers — in all this clasping, cloying pressure to accept and agree, a few of us will always pop out like pips, ejected by just those forces that seek to clamp us in — but much as I distrust it in principle and hate it for its unearned, faux-patrician snobbery, I relish it, almost worship it.
Oh, just look at you all. Self-satisfied but still desperate to get on, do better, compete, make more. And it’s okay because this is the way everybody is, this is what everyone does, so there’s nothing to be gained by being any different. That’s the new orthodoxy, this is the new faith. There was never an end of history, just a perceived end of the need to teach it, remember it, draw any lessons from it. Because we know better, and this is a new paradigm, once more. I have a friend — again, in London — who’s a Libertarian. Actually I have a few, though they wouldn’t all call themselves such. In theory it’s a broad church with a decent left wing, but everyone I meet seems to be on the right: Rand fans. Idea appears to be that people just need to be encouraged to be a bit more selfish and all our problems will be sorted.
I don’t think I get this.
And it’s so unambitious, so weak, so default and mean-spirited; in a way so cowardly. Is that really the most we can look for in ourselves? Just give in and be selfish; settle for that because it’s what the last generation did and look how well it worked out for them? (Fuck subsequent ones; they can look after themselves.) Settle for that because it’s easy to find that core of childish greed within us, and so simple to measure the strength of it, through power and money. Or, boiling it down a bit further, just with money.
Really? I mean, seriously? This is the best we have to offer ourselves?
Fuck me, a bit of fucking ambition here, for the love of fuck. However, I am interrupted. I always am.
