“I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.” The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
“You still don't get it. It's not about right. Not about wrong. It's about power.” Buffy the Vampire Slayer
“Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav’n.” Paradise Lost, John Milton
“You can't fight City Hall.” Homer Simpson
It's funny, how life behaves itself (or doesn't) You can spend years - sometimes your entire life - wanting something, or needing something, or dreading something, or being absolutely, certainly positive that you will feel a particular way when a particular thing happens.
I have been desperate for today's election result since I was twenty-one. I have struggled and cried and screamed and gone to protest after protest and put my faith in false idols. I have CARED, so very much. And, perhaps more importantly for me, I have HOPED, so very much.
I know that politics of division is foolish and childish and enables extremism. But the last fourteen years have been…so hard. So hard and exhausting and dispiriting and filled with obstacles. I am very interested in Indian religions, which I hope is not horribly appropriative, and one of the figures I am most interested in is Ganesha, who, amongst other roles, is the remover of obstacles. It has felt, since the Tories came in, that there has been a removal of obstacles for some people, and an increasing number of obstacles for other people (NOT blaming Ganesha here.) I am, sadly, one of the latter. I think there are several reasons for this, but, ultimately, the blame for the obstacles rests above me (how I handled these obstacles is another matter).
Brains are amazing things - they do all sorts of things, sometimes willingly, sometimes not. The part of your brain that makes connections between things (links them together) is the hippocampus. A psychologist called B F Skinner did an experiment where he looked at how animals connected behaviour and stimulus - through positive reinforcement and sadly also punishment. Small animals were put in a box which contained a series of levers. Some of the levers released food, but most of the levers caused electric shocks or horrible sounds. By the time the animals had been in the box for a short while, they were scared of the levers and eventually the box, because they associated the levers with pain and suffering. The Tories, and the stereotypes of people who are Tories, are intrinsically linked forever in my mind with pain and suffering - my ex-husband, being left out in the cold from my chosen career(s), losing money and being frightened of having money taken away from me, having little to no effective or compassionate medical care for my bipolar disorder for years, job after job working in two particular industries where everyone in charge is a posh, greedy, egotistical man, the pandemic lockdowns which led to so many physical, mental and creative problems for me, constantly worrying about the care my parents will get if, like my dad already has been, they get ill. The Tories are my levers, if I were a rat. This, essentially, is how abuse works, particularly for animals and children - if someone does something bad to you over and over, you learn to be afraid of them, and that leads to you having ‘triggers’ (triggers are a real, psychiatric thing, despite what the Daily Mail says) and feeling unsafe. And when people feel unsafe, they tend to not behave the best way.
So, I expected to feel SOMETHING positive when I woke up to the news that Labour have won a landslide in the general election. Something. But I feel nothing.
NOTHING.
I have probed my emotions deeply (well, in the last 12 hours) and all I can find, apart from the general anxiety that I have every minute of every day (this is relatively new, and who knows if it is linked to the Tories or not?), is a vague, weary sense of helplessness and a kind of absence. I have been trying to identify what it is an absence of, and I have, suddenly, after a long lie down, realised what it is.
It is an absence of hope. I feel completely and utterly devoid of any hope for the future at all. This is not to say that I feel sad or angry. We are way past that. I just feel…hopeless.
“BUT WAIT!” I hear you cry, through the void of your tiny screen, “YOU ARE HAVING A BABY! WHAT COULD BE MORE HOPEFUL THAN THAT????”
And I answer - first of all, that is way too much fucking pressure for a baby. Babies are not born to give you a stake in the future. If that is the case, that justifies all the awful “as a mother” bullshit (people rarely say “as a father”, unless it's some wanker saying “as a father of girls” in order to justify doing something that interferes with the lives of women because you obviously have absolutely no motivation to respect or care for women's safety or benefit until one that you put there has fallen out of someone.) It essentially makes them completely responsible for your future engagement with society, as if without them you should just not give a fuck about anything and now they are here they are responsible for your social and emotional wellbeing. It's bullshit.
And second of all, having a baby isn't an act of hope in itself. It is an act of need. Needs and hopes are extremely different. If people had babies based around hope for them being a particular way, or with a rose coloured ideal of how they will enhance your life, then we would be in a sorry state (I think this is the reason a lot of people have babies).
You have a baby (in countries where you are lucky enough to have some control over this) because you need one. Because you need love. Because you need a reason. Ultimately- you need hope. Having a baby isn't an act of hope. It is an act of someone who needs something to hope FOR. And that, instead of cuteness and baby clothes and having a kid who is a barrister, should be the fact that you are able to love another person unconditionally. And, sometimes, that is the only thing that is left.
Anyway, hope has nothing to do with it. But I feel, in terms of the future, hopeless. Not sad or angry. But hopeless.
Nothing will get easier. Nothing will change. Not for people like me and the Musician, or my parents, or my friends, or Little Dude. Because the only thing (ironically, apart from change in personal circumstances, which is constant) that is certain, is that the wider world doesn't change, because humans don't change.
You know why things don't change?
Because the people who have power will always have power. They will never not have it. It might be dressed up differently, sure, and they might complain a lot more, and they might act like that they have less power (they do this, cleverly, to lull everyone into thinking this is so, and that things are changing and getting better). But they will always have it, because, ultimately, the only way to get power is by getting in bed (proverbially but sometimes literally speaking) with the people who already have it.
That could be by smarming up to them, or becoming dependent on them, or serving them. It could be by, slowly and surely, becoming like them, because you learn that that is the only way to survive, and, sometimes, get some power yourself. George Orwell knew this (a very clever man in many ways, we discussed naming LD after him - surname- but I have recently discovered he was a massive homophobe, so that's gone.) In Animal Farm, the pigs are eventually indistinguishable from men.
I am not, I should add, blaming anyone for this. This is part of being a human and surviving. Survival is everything. That is why we tell ourselves lies and become bitter and bite like a wounded dog. This is what has happened to Labour. They have become the farmers, because they have had to, to get anywhere.
When I was younger, one of the reasons I married my ex-husband was because I was, essentially, getting into bed with the establishment in a way I thought would protect me, having been wounded by things in the past (even though I was only 21 then). I was basically Vichy France with tits, as Caitlin Moran spectacularly put it. And, if I had been emotionally tougher, maybe I would have stayed married to someone I didn't love because I would have had power (not of my own, but via access to his). But I could not hack it emotionally, and am powerless and poor as a result (albeit, crucially, married to someone I love very dearly, which helps). And being powerless, even though it is the destiny of most people, who have never stood a chance, is not fun.
I started this post with some quotes. The first quote is from The Great Gatsby, a novel I have always felt is overrated (it has the stupidest plotline in literature apart from Pericles, where the hero is conveniently kidnapped by pirates to move him from A to B). I think the reason The Great Gatsby is so valued is actually because of its insights- not the characters or the plot or the writing. And this insight is one of the greatest and most brutal. If LD is a girl, part of me, now, hopes she is a pretty idiot who marries a banker. Because, ultimately, it is the only way she will get any power, and that will make her life less difficult.
If LD is a boy, the same small, wriggling, slimy part of me wishes he will be a rugby playing QC. Because that is the only way he will have power, and that will make his life less difficult.
Obviously, the majority of me is desperate for them to be a kind, sweet, brave, defiant, socially responsible, rebellious little creature. Like, 90% of me? And I hate the 10% which feels the above, and want to purge it with fire. But, of late, it is there, and I think it is important not to run from the nasty slimy bits of you, because if you shine a light on them, sometimes other people can see them too, and then they melt away like nightmares when you open the curtains.
But it is hard to feel any kind of hope for any positive change at all, now. I did, I did. But now I just can't. There is nothing left.
There is also a quote above from one of the greatest poets of all time (Homer Simpson, obviously - this quote is from the episode where they go to “Blockoland” and Lisa gets a toy with a piece missing, and he thinks he is preparing her for future disappointments, before becoming a Good Samaritan and enjoying fighting people's battles for them. Later in the episode he goes on a hunger strike to gain justice for his baseball team, which he ultimately saves, but only because the powerful baseball men decide to let him).
Only kidding (sort of).
Milton famously said that the mind is its own place and could make a heaven of hell and a hell of heaven. Check your privilege, Milton. He said a lot of things, but this quote is essentially saying that you are better off being powerful in Hell, controlling your own destiny even if it is miserable, than being subservient in Heaven, where things are easy and nice but you have no control of your own destiny or choices. Is he right? I don't know, now. Because, weirdly - being subservient in Heaven still gives you more power? If power is safety and freedom from fear? Who knows?
Guys, I am sorry for the bleakness. It is one of those days. I will be back with a bowl filled with cheery chat soon as I can.
Absolutely no need to apologise-your reaction is quite understandable and justified! The greatest advantage LD will have, though, is parents like you who will love and nurture them ❤️
More than a decade of such a cynical and self seeking government would make anyone feel hopeless and helpless, hence the low turnout to vote and the creeping rise of more extreme political parties,and the system, as you say, never seems to change.
But who would ever have imagined Angela Rayner as Deputy PM, that we would have had a woman PM and an Asian one? The Welfare State and NHS are incredible examples of what the right politicians can achieve and they are not examples of just rearranging the deckchairs.
I believe Kate is absolutely right about thinking of “small community” rather than the overwhelming “ big world” and this can , in time, make a fundamental difference. It has to start somewhere.
Inequality ( in intelligence and aptitude, regardless of wealth) will never not exist but we do live in a country where your daughter ( if LD is one) could be a rugby playing QC if she wanted to and that is progress ❤️