Passionate about the “Compassion Culture”?

Is there a rise in sloppy sentimentalism, and a “compassion culture”, growing in this country? The former editor of The Telegraph and the Evening Standard, seventy-something historian, Sir Max Hastings, seems to think so. He spoke said about the pandemic recently on the BBC Radio 4 “World at One” programme:

“We mustn’t, as the older folks, worry about the consequence, the ideas, of our getting ill or even dying for our own sakes because we have had so much that we have no grounds to complain. What we must worry about is not becoming a dead weight on the NHS. Where compassion culture has taken hold. We don’t face the fact that all these stupendous sums of spending that are coming up, they’ve got to be paid for by somebody. And I for one, when I pop my clogs, I hate the idea that my children, my grandchildren are going to be the ones who pay.”

In one sense this might be thought of as a selfless, perhaps even noble, sentiment. I have no way of knowing what his children and grandchildren think of him making this statement, one would hope he has. Would his children be ready to sacrifice a few more years with their loved one in exchange for a few pounds off their future tax bills, I wonder? 

It would be easy at this point to dismiss Hastings as an insensitive, compassionless individual who has somehow failed to connect with his emotions, or at least those of his family. But, it seems this is not so. After the Death of Prince Philip, The Duke of Edinburgh he appeared on “Any Questions”, another BBC Radio 4 programme, here is part of what he said:

 “We took the Queen and Prince Philip for granted.

The dreadful loneliness that must afflict the Queen, because to be royal, it is almost impossible, you can’t really have friends. Yes you can have people with whom you spend time, but one of the things about being royal is that royals almost without exception feel that nobody else could possibly share their experience, their lives, and they’ve nobody to talk to, they’ve nobody to confide in, but of course the Queen has councillors and the Queen has friends of whom she spends time with […] all our thoughts go out to the Queen, but who has she got to talk to now about her unique predicament?  And Prince Philip was the only person with whom she could discuss the situation. And that poor woman, to whom we owe so much, her loneliness in this circumstance and it is something that’s one of many, many reasons that most of us, thank goodness, that we are lucky enough not to be royal is because the dreadful loneliness of being royal in general and especially of being the Queen. […] by gosh, I will be praying for the Queen’s welfare more fervently than I have for years.”

It would be hard to disagree with him in his heartfelt and quite moving response to, “that poor woman”, the Queen’s predicament. I am going to resist the temptation to make a cheap jibe about hypocrisy, because this raises a fascinating question about feelings. Which feelings should we value and which not?

Should we empathise more with a high-status individual whom, because of their media prominence, we feel we know rather than some ordinary anonymous person who we’ve never heard of? Hastings might point to the Queen’s commitment to her role of monarch, her quiet dignity and the public service to which she has dedicated her life. But many other people might well have admirable qualities having dedicated their lives to their respective trade or profession, and to their families. While the Queen might certainly suffer dreadful loneliness so will tens of thousands of people bereaved by the pandemic who are now forced to live on their own. Isn’t this the very time that we should be promoting a “compassion culture”?

Should there really be a hierarchy of feeling? Is the compassion we feel for a fluffy puppy of a lower “status” than the feelings we have for our most exalted leaders? Feelings are just feelings aren’t they? Perhaps people like Hastings miss the point when they denigrate the so called “compassion culture”. Here it seems they are revealing an interesting aspect of human nature. We don’t just have feelings about real people, whether they are still living or not, we also have feelings about feelings themselves. Perhaps Hastings and those who share his views should realise that feelings about other people’s feelings should count for less than feelings for real actual beings, whether they are victims of the pandemic, their loved ones, or other people in distress for whatever reason.

This is why we must value the rights and feelings of all human beings, indeed those of all other sentient beings. To lose contact with our compassion is a step towards the failure of empathy that has characterised all the human generated evils, like war and genocide, that have so profoundly destroyed life and soured the quality of life of millions around the world. Perhaps this is something on which the historian in Hastings should reflect.

The Hour has come! Where’s the Man?

“Cometh the hour cometh the man.”

I’m not much given to quoting from the bible, it is prone to contradicting itself, and, in any case, there doesn’t seem to be any good reason to suppose that just because some emergency arises there is any mechanism by which “the man” should automatically, miraculously and serendipitously appear. Today, with the arrival of a deadly pandemic that has infected the entire inhabited world “the Hour” is definitely here, so where’s “the Man”? Is “the Man” Boris Johnson?

If you, as a non-aviation specialist, get on a plane, go up to the cockpit and tell the pilot to “pull that lever”, “press that button” and  “flip that switch”, the likelihood is that you and everyone else on the plane will crash and burn. We all have to defer to specialists when we do not have the expertise ourselves, but during the coronavirus crisis, it seems that Johnson’s hands were pulling the levers. Political correspondent Mikey Smith on the Daily Mirror website claims that Johnson and his ministers:

“…were told in July that the worst case was avoidable – if their advice was followed. They urged ministers not to rush to reopen schools and universities, not to plan a relaxation over Christmas and to keep people working from home wherever possible. But in each case, Mr Johnson’s government ignored the advice – and in each case had to perform u-turns as transmission rates rose.”

What was driving this policy of science denial? In the sitcom, Only Fools and horses, Derek Trotter’s misplaced “This time next year we’ll be millionaires” optimism is a source of one of the series most effective comic tropes. Unfortunately, Boris Johnson’s famous “Dell Boy” optimism is rather less funny, when the figures show that this country has the worst death rate in Europe, and one of the worst in the entire world. Johnson’s lever pulling may well have cost the lives of tens of thousands of British people.

It may, however, be too simplistic to claim that that the failure is down to the individual peccadillos of one person. It could be argued that there is a more sinister underlying mentality infecting the cabal of failure that is currently running our country. Johnson might well have been restrained by the good and sensible advice of more restrained and wiser colleagues. He wasn’t, so why not?

The political system in this country is founded on the concept of winners and losers. The fact that this government sees itself as the winners of the last election, in their minds, gives them complete entitlement. They have the right to fly the plane and to hell with anyone who tries to tell them which way to go. And the “right” direction for them is set out in Conservative Party ideology that favours free market economics, individual freedom and most of all serving the god of the economy.

Politics is not a game. The primary role of political parties ought to be to serve the country, not to win the political equivalent of the FA Cup, especially when we are presented with a corrupt political system that, in the last election, gave the winning party a grotesquely large majority when it only won 47% of the vote. To put this another way, most people in the country did not vote for the Tories but ended up with them in charge anyway. One can only hope that the public will finally see sense, and agree to get rid of competitive elitism and reform a voting system that is geared towards political medal winning instead of what is best for the county.