Post-seriousness

In the last few days I've blogged on subjects ranging from Syria and macroeconomics to football, tattoos and Miley Cyrus, prompting the question: am I serious or not?

The fact is, I can't tell the difference. Westminster politics is supposed to be serious. But is it? Nick Cohen's description of Nick Clegg - "a beta male, a mediocre conformist" - or David Aaronovitch's of Ed Miliband ("he is not a presence at all, he is an absence") could apply to most frontbenchers. They rely for what little credibility they have upon the gravitas of office: would anyone really take seriously George Osborne's thoughts (by which I mean stream of cliches) on the economy if he weren't Chancellor? Would he even have any thoughts?

Satire used to thrive by undermining the pompousness and high-mindedness of politics. But this is no longer possible. Nobody notices when you puncture a deflated balloon. Satire - be it The Thick of It or the Daily Mash - seems indistinguishable from good reportage.

Which is in turn easily distinguished from actual reportage. A lot of political reporting consists either of trivial Kremlinology - a description of a soap opera in which most "characters" are interchangeable one-dimensional cyphers - or of an unquestioning imposition of an ideology which fetishizes "strong leadership."

Of course, millions of people are suffering because of political decisions. But whilst their troubles are serious, the politics that caused them are not.

If allegedly serious subjects aren't serious, then the opposite is also true - "light" subjects contain important messages.

Back in the early 90s, when his bellendery was of only measurable proportions, Toby Young helped found the Modern Review, with the tagline "low culture for high-brows." It was an important insight. So-called "low culture" such as Miley and TV programmes can raise interesting economic issues at least as often as does Westminster politics; economics, remember, is not just (or even mainly) macroeconomics.

There's another reason for taking "low culture" seriously.It's that the culture, ideology and cognitive biases that help sustain inequality don't just manifest themselves in formal party political statements, but in our everyday lives; this is the truth captured by the often misused phrase, "the personal is the political." Ideology is manifested in tattoos and football as much as in "serious" matters.

It's an easy trick for writers to contend that we live in a post-something age - post-modern, post-ideological, post-industrial, post-truth, whatever. Perhaps we live in a post-serious age.

Comments

[T]

My wife cannot bear to watch 'Yes Minister', its too much like her life at work in a quango, especially in interactions with their sponsoring government department...

We truly do live in a post-serious age.

[gastro george]

The problem is that satire morphs easily into cynicism, which also leads to a form of powerlessness - "all politicians are crap and we can never do nothing about it".

And this is the kind of agenda that most news media are happy to promote, as it enables the Murdochs of this world get on with looting society.

[Guano]

The fetish of strong leadership implies ignoring established procedures and institutions, such as international law. There is rarely, though, an open debate about whether those institutions are still relevant; there is just an implicit assumption that they are irrelevant or out-of-date.

There is also an implicit assumption that the strong leader knows what needs to be done (which happens to fit the prejudices of the fetishists).

[gastro george]

Yes, Cohen and Aaronovitch should be all too aware of where alpha male leadership took us last time ... but I guess that they are.

[Six8Fifty]

"Back in the early 90s, when his bellendery was of only measurable proportions, ..:"

Apologies for the non-brit question: ¿ what is the meaning of "bellendery" (and within this context) ?
¿Hubris?
¿Arrogance?

Thank you

[Ralph Musgrave]

T,

Could you get your wife to write a guide on how to extract free taxpayers money from government departments? She’d have to use a pseudonym of course.

My guess is that one needs to demonstrate to the department that the money will be frittered away to no benefit at all. For example if anyone like Chris Dillow or me with an obvious passionate interest in economics were to apply for money to support our blogs, we’d be told to eff off.

In contrast, if some hooray henry wants to go to university to study a subject he has no interest in at all, and with a view to getting drunk twice a week, then taxpayers’ money is showered on him.

[FromArseToElbow]

The critique that we live in a post-serious age is not a new one, and can be traced back through postmodernism ("the cultural logic of late capitalism") all the way to the original reactionary thinkers of the late 17th/early 18th centuries.

In a nutshell, once we dethroned monarchs as the earthly represenatatives of God, we condemned ourselves to a squalid, mundane and anti-heroic existence. We have been banished from the garden through our own hubris and obsession with material things (well, apples).

The ideological purpose of Toby Young is to distract from the reality of commodification through the combination of defensive irony and an appeal to eternal conservative values. The absolute helmet.

[Zorblog]

What about a facebook share button so that we easily repost?

[Guano]

Bellendery - act of indulging in behaviour typical of an extreme tosser, otherwise known as a bellend. (Urban dictionary)

[Six8Fifty]

@guano: again, non-brit apologies - I still fail to understand what you're trying to convey. "Extreme tosser" = someone who drinks heavily...?

[Dan]

@Six8Fifty: to describe someone as a tosser, curl your fingers as if you were gripping the shaft of something, with the the tip of your thumb against the tips of your fingers. Keeping your wrist loose, jerk your arm up and down from the elbow. Keeping the gesture in the general crotch region will improve the effectiveness/offensiveness. Avoid aiming the gesture in the direction to large men, especially those in an advanced state of refreshment.

Also, the shape of a head of a small chap resembles a bell. Somewhat.

[Six8Fifty]

@dan: LOL. Thanks. British humor rulez. Dude....
(just doing some post seriousness posturing, very unbritish style)