Happy Christmas

Written by Jamie Saturday, 24 December 2011 08:52

I have been on the couch this morning, with stomach acid and a headache, as I have lost the ability to process alcohol. Basically, I’ve turned into my mother, who rises early, does her exercises, and then goes off and does her jobs. So I am on the couch then and Prince Phillip was rushed into hospital, one footballer called another footballer a negro, and the BBC news presenters are having a bake-off. Over in Helmand, Staff Sergeant someone-or-other is preparing Christmas dinners for 500 soldiers and General Sir someone-or-other is there to rally the troops. It all makes for wonderful viewing. One would be forgiven for thinking that we live in an ideal world. We’ve actually made war cool, made the weapons of government heroes. This level of delusion was matched, centuries ago, by Dutch painters who would represent a winter scene with jolly children and puritanical looking men on ice-skates. The paintings were a fantasy, of course, something to hope for as the whole of Amsterdam froze and sneezed and died.

The difference with the old Dutch winterscapes is that everyone knew they were bullshit. In lieu of firewood, they were heart warming, a melodrama to which one could attach hope. The news, here in my living room, should not be heart warming. No, rather it should serve to wake us from our slumber. In our war in Afghanistan, 30,000 people have died. That’s babies, women, men. I’d prefer not to see our soldiers on X-Factor but I’d rather like to see them in a play that reenacts Guardsman Daniel Cook bayoneting a ten year old boy in the kidney.

In our businesses we watch not only master storytellers spin yarns that mis-represent the truth, but we watch out colleagues submit willingly to it. The fury we might feel over something as trivial as a test, or a deployment procedure, is our frustration manifest: we don’t like to be controlled by the delusional. With that in mind, how on Earth does it feel to lose a child at the hands of a soldier fighting a pointless war? To lose your country? And as the stakes get higher, as they do at work during moments of change, the delusion goes stronger. The more starvation and misery we contribute to, the more we tell ourselves, collectively, that everything is fine. We submit to the message, reality being too terrifying to face. And so, on Christmas eve, I am confronted with the big news of the day: a 90 year old man is sick, a football player for Liverpool called a football player for Manchester a negro, and Sian Williams and Bill Turnbull won the BBC breakfast bake-off. Life, it seems, goes on despite, or maybe because of, the blood on all of our hands.

Happy Christmas.

painting1

Hendrick Dubbels, (c. 1621 - 76), A Winter Landscape With Skaters On A Frozen Lake

Reference
Rayment, S. (3rd of December, 2011) ‘British soldier jailed for stabbing 10-year-old Afghan boy’. Available from: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/8933193/British-soldier-jailed-for-stabbing-10-year-old-Afghan-boy.html. [Accessed on 24th of December, 9:00.]