In a Election Year In Expressionism In Surrealism 4 Functions In 2-Tone
In Superpower In History In Counterpoint Of Regency Of Victorious
By Messotint BY SUETONIUS In Political Superpower as Brain
of Conspiracy in Pornography by Numbers in Pointillism Via Postmodernity
As Traditions By Salmongundy By Mandate Of Perspective As Carving
As Portrait of Charisma As Fracture Of Champions 2 Campaigns
Through Scandal Of Capitulations In Wanting in Idiocy of Concorde
In Governance Through Fiction in an Elegy across Icongraphy As a Grimoire By Cassius Through Nightmare In Novellas of the Great Divide Of The Ceasura
Portrait as Tradition
Perhaps other countries are like it as well – I mean stuck in some time period. England’s time is clearly the eighteenth century, with gardens and its rural bliss, it places itself in the country and as ‘well fed’ farmers. There is some sense in this. In terms of wealth, the agrarian revolution prior to the Industrial Revolution did make a population that was better fed than there had been any time since the late Middle Ages (or so). The intrinsic merriment of Jane Austen’s novels is genuine. People are genuinely wealthier than they had been. It was a relatively golden time for the countryside. And (as golden ages do) it cast a long shadow over other, later, times. The dream of a rural bliss, and of getting back to the land, of having a bit of land, or somehow buying out of the urban and industrial nightmare which enclosed the nineteenth century, still resonates very powerfully today. We are still lost in the dream of a golden and long gone century. This is England, our England…
However, the picture that has trapped us, is far from simple. It is then, one of those complex pictures of a social order, and happiness - a pastoral scene by perhaps Constable. In the distance there are the foursquare lines of a ‘modern’ eighteenth century country house. Of columns and granite. In the foreground there are happy farmers doing their bit, loading up the hay, in a golden light. In the far distance there in a shift in the light, one can see under some dark wood, the forms of individuals less happy, just as industrious, doing something under the dark of the trees. Here then one has an entire social order, of wealthy, of deserving and aspiring poor (or farmers) and the hidden menace of distant land, where things might be done so differently. And yet there is clearly something about this portrait, something that resonates, something that makes people project their identities onto the portrait and find their position within it.
In a sense this is what all of British (and even more English) Imperial history has been for the last three hundred year or so. For this is surely the portrait of the birth of the Empire. The stable world at the centre – the wealth of the mother country, surrounded by its porticos and marble. The happiness of the Empire, serving the mother country, becoming wealthy and slyly improved. Whilst on the outside, there was always the other - the hidden threat or other rival Empire (the French or ‘the natives’) doing their own stuff, in their own way, in a light that firmly is not British. The image then that we sold the world, and in a sense do still sell to the world.
It is certainly the image that those numbers of individuals who so want to come here see, and resonates with them. They see the richness of the country house, and the wealth of the peasants, and naturally want a part of it. All the more so because the logic of the system has meant that they have been turned by it, into mere denizens of the forest - reduced to the poverty of that blue light under the trees. Those others, on the outside know that they are the ones who have been affected by that light. Its golden beams are founded upon their slavery, and they naturally want to move closer to it. A situation that of course, fascinatingly and perplexingly, is being codified within the science of climate change. A science which would appear to actually prove that the others, the forest dweller’s world, really has been polluted by all the gold and grey of the country house world. So much so that their world is genuinely in peril – and the West, the ‘country house’, is called upon to respond, with whatever aid or charity it sees fit (as of course it was in the Potato Famine).
Alternatively (and more recently) there have been another group of individuals who have felt themselves left out in the wood, from the wonders of industrialization and the golden countryside. These are the citizens of Central Europe. A hinterland caught between the industrial powers of the West and East. They then felt it was always their actual right to move towards the centre of power in Europe, to become one of those happy shiny peasants. The trouble was of course that no country (other then Britain) would have them. A move that has itself created endless knock-on effects within that world of golden light.
The denizens of the country house have also been a complex crew. They are of course the new middle classes, their wealth ultimately based on trade, (or slaves). They are then faced with behaving always according to the legacies and traditions of a world that was never their own. In the eighteenth century they were always busy aspiring to aristocracies. Today the same kind of individuals are aspiring to be at once part of the literati. But at the same time they have inherited much of the world of the aristocrats. They assume then that the world really ought to revolve around them and their concerns. They end up assuming all too easily that everything beyond their walls really is OK; that there is no poverty or problem. Or perhaps they hope that in the end everyone in their dream, can have their own country house, and aspire to be as they are. More than that, secure, as they are in their walls, there is the beautiful (and innocent) arrogance of power infused into them and their actions. They therefore understand very well, the desire of the wood dweller to come into the park, and are quite willing to let them in, so long as they behave. For if one is wealthy, it is so very easy (and feels so very right) to share one’s charity. Indeed the very fact that it is charity means that it ought to be shared (and those who are used to getting it, ought to learn to love the sharing). Moreover (and this is unstated and yet true of course) allowing others into the park, is getting additional labour cheaper than ever before. Who wants a British housekeeper when one can have a Polish one? Who wants a British housekeeper when one has to pay British wages, instead of Polish ones? When the interests of greed, and charity run close together, one has to be so very careful about the results!
And what of the peasants in the middle? They are a wired lot. In good times in the modern picture they actually feel themselves to be inside the manor house itself. They are after all part of the golden light, caught up in its gaze. They might really dwell under its frescoed walls. As such they feel they have a right to its wealth, and aspire to be a part of its fabric. From this perspective they feel not at all threatened by the dwellers in the wood.
And yet at this point (once such workers are allowed in), other rather harsher lights start to infuse that golden light. For the trouble is, that the picture is not a total distortion. The implied link between the golden light and the manor is always clear for all to see. The point is that there is something about the world of order and light that allows these peasant farmers their wealth. They are being organized by reason (or whatever is its modern equivalent) and so improved. Their wealth is then caught up with working for the manor house. We might say of course that our wealth as a nation is rather problematic. We have (in comparison to others) a habit of over-paying ourselves.
The result then is of course that we are very vulnerable to change. Oh as long as the wealth of other nations keeps on piling in then there is something spare for most people (or at least one can dream that there is). But once the income source of the manor house - slave trading or banking for instance - is removed, then the golden light fades, and the peasents and the wood dwellers are caught up in the same very harsh blue light. Their utopia is revealed as being baseless (or only possible because of Empires, be they of humans or money). The oddness of the picture and its lights is a genuine one. The golden light of rural bliss is actually only possible because the manor house has kept and stolen the blue of the forest to split into its gold. And yet of course to the farmers and workers in the rich fields their very wealth feels like their own birthright. Why should it feel different? They will resent then, any changes or fracturing of it. They will resent the dwellers of the forest who bring with them such diffusions.
Nor of course is this presentiment totally misplaced. In a sense to those who are within the manor house it does not really matter who does their work or how. They are perfectly willing to employ the forest dweller, if it will reduce overall working costs – why not? They might ask - What right have our group of peasants, the ones we have always used, to our money which was actually originally made elsewhere? This question in a sense is always left hanging by the wealthy (as it always opens up the far more troubling question of how the wealthy themselves came into their own rights).
This then has its own weird effect. For the answer to the question, is that on the face of it at least, the wealthy manor house owner will know that they have some kind of duty to their people (in the best eighteenth century way). They need then to look after their farmers and their estate. There is then a moral imperative to do so (even if the economic rules would say something else). The economic argument that could allow everyone into the park, is then diluted by the moral argument that restricts this everyone. - Or at least listens to the calls for restricting, and partially restricts the number coming in. Or at least we will agree we ought to and do nothing actually about it. For why should the manor houses act, when all their ‘charity’ and all their economic interest (and reason) tells them that such actions will not help and might impoverish everything?
The result is then a patchwork. All through the golden light one can catch images of forest dwellers let in, and yet officially hardly there at all. They are then there, and yet hidden (known only when a particular light catches them in the sun). The manor house then lets them in quietly – whilst it pretends to be doing something else. Or perhaps it moves some of the shafts of light to the forest itself, and allows then a little paint splash to light up distant blue trees (a hint of far light). And it does so even as it pretends still to represent and help those closest and nearest to it.
The result is then that the golden light becomes more brittle and sickly. For those infused by it, cannot forget it, and its borrowed earth. They cannot forget the extra wealth, the closeness to the manor house it breeds. They resent every change, every bluing of their own light, and every goldening in the wood. They resent but can do nothing (perhaps nothing could be done). Wealth slips then away. - Breeding a new and rampant fear. The fear the farmers have, that they might slip back into the forest. For if the world was set right and the wealth returned to where it often came from – the forest, the peculiar powers and rights of the farmers in the golden light would vanish. More than that, these same individuals know that within the manor house (who of course continue in their beefy independence to feel that they are always the future), there are factions from all sides that would allow it to happen.
The fear here then is a genuine one. A fear that creates within the smiling goodness of the peasant something else lurking in the eyes, an anger that needs not to be stirred. The golden light, the cry goes up, must stay. The result is then that it itself becomes a shibboleth: The belief in it is a pact that unites manor and farmer. Farmers believe then that the golden light is theirs if only it was purged of the bluing by the forest dwellers, and the interference of the manor house. I.e. that the cock up is firmly with the manor houses. If they got their houses in order, and administered properly, cutting back waste, then everything ought be OK. From such a point of view then, the wealth that was theirs might well be theirs again (and should be). Meanwhile the denizens of the manor house (who might know that it is not this simple) also know that if they confessed to those outside (that the wealth was never theirs in the first place, or never simply theirs) then all hell would break loose, and the position of privilege of the manor house would vanish. It is far better then to pretend that the golden light might be restored by improvements in administration, and to accept some pruning back of those from the forest who have filtered into the frame. The manor house then, to keep its own power, its own special place, has to connive in the lie, and hope for the best. Its light is also brittle in the end.
The portrait which we sold to the world, and to ourselves, the portrait that invited others in, has become then for us a cask or coffin into which we and our social order appears to be necessarily bound. We cannot easily break up the light we gave ourselves and that world it lit up. The trouble of course is that we sold an image so powerful - of stolen wealth illicitly turned into rural bliss - that everyone wants it. And yet there was only one world to pilfer - one world to steal from. The result is then that the golden light is very brittle in its rights to annex the worlds of others, and organize them, and cannot be easily shared (for it was founded on a crime). The modern problem then is how or if, one can take the golden light that could be created in this borrowing of another’s resources, and make it into something shared. How then can we double up our world and get more for it? How can we not waste resources? (and so all have a chance of the golden light). Can we then through technology create other worlds whose resources we can plunder (waves, sun or wind) or are we yet caught in our own bright trap? A problem that is even now being worked out.
