God
Help Ye Merry Gentlemen
This
blog is all about good manners and courtesy – or the
lack of it in modern life. “Am I bovvered” –
yes I am. Someone once said: 'Modern life is rubbish'.
I believe they scribbled it on the back of a toilet door for
maximum effect, then the band Blur spotted it and named an
album after it. Very good it is a too, but not as good as
‘The Great Escape’ album, which, with
a title like that seems like a sequel to me. On The Great
Escape album there is a track called 'Ernold Same'.
Sung, or narrated at least, by Ken Livingstone, at that time
a Labour politician and later to become Mayor of London, hopefully
striving to make modern life less rubbish, at least in London
anyway.
Courtesy is a strange thing – certainly in London, but
wherever you are it is something we cannot practice alone,
especially when we are prone to swearing at ourselves under
our breath, like I am. Perhaps it is because modern life is
definitely stressful, demanding, disappointing and wasteful
(generally termed rubbish for short) courtesy tends to get
forgotten, or put off, or laid to one side as too much extra
effort in a hard world. 'Ernold Same' is a song about
boredom and drudgery – same old this, same old that…
same old becoming Mayor of London. Exactly the sort of thing
that lets apathy set in and standards drop.
Courtesy often seems just a formality anyway. We say hello
and wave to people we wish we had never spotted in the first
place, or more to the point, we wish they had never spotted
us... and so in the general repetitive nature of life, we
forget (on purpose) to be polite. We deny it. But life without
all that false formality, although more truthful, is definitely
worse – definitely more rubbish and certainly uncertain.
There is nothing more heartwarming than when a complete stranger
is polite, even though you know full well it would not continue
if you got to know them, or worse, if you fell in love. Try
an experiment. Stand in front of a shop display looking at
the products, but leave a gap between you and the display
so people have to pass in between. (Those of you who are just
starting to need glasses will probably be used to this) Now
see how many people say excuse me as they pass, not very many,
I’ve tried it – perhaps it’s just me, thought
I suspect not. To the passer by it’s you that’s
in their way – you that are forcing them to
apologise – to speak, which they have no intention of
doing. However, if one of them says "excuse me",
it is guaranteed to brighten up your day and vice versa.
I have noticed that around Christmas people do get a little
more polite. It’s as though that last, horrible year
was all there is and they have made it to the end of that
vile world. Next year will be different – modern life
may be rubbish, but the future is always somehow potentially
better – the great escape we all wish for – it’s
called hope, and it’s the best Christmas present you’ll
ever get.
Being polite is a good register for our own existence. “If
a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it fall, has it
really fallen” – if we swear under our breath
when alone, have we really sworn – do we really exist.
Get my point? If we say “hello”, or “sorry”
when we get in someone’s way, it’s just a register
of their existence and it makes them feel better – they’ll
probably reply just to hear the sound of their own voice ringing
through, what just a few moments earlier, was the jumbled
wilderness of the mind. By not saying anything, you are denying
the other person their existence, that’s what makes
it impolite.
Existence is all about physics and ultimately, ‘quantum’
physics. This is the physics of the infinitely small, where
everything is possible – even being polite. In 1935
Erwin Schroedinger proposed an experiment to do with quantum
physics in which a cat is put in an opaque box where an atom
is expected to decay. Without going into it at great length,
the idea was to demonstrate the ‘uncertainty principle’.
Does the cat exist or not while you can’t see it? This
experiment has not been tried – ever, but my own theory
is why bother with the cat and an opaque box?
Just try the ‘shop experiment’ and see if anyone
says “excuse me”. It’s a much more practical
experiment that should help quantify your existence once and
for all and it’s one we can do anytime we’re out
shopping. If no one acknowledges your presence, you can philosophise
for the rest of the day about whether you exist or not. I
have been ‘uncertain’ on many occasions. However,
I usually come home with less money, so unless my wallet decays
like radium, flicking coins out into the universe at random,
this ‘coin loss’ may be evidence of some form
of interaction, or shopping, as it may be termed. “I
shop, therefore I am”.
So, what are you giving and getting this Christmas? Remember,
it’s the thought that counts and what we could all do
with this year is a nice parcel of good manners and courtesy
– in short, a bit of thoughtfulness, but remember: “courtesy
is for life – not just for Christmas”.
It all boils down to quantum physics and sub atomic particles
in the end – it’s the small things that really
count, and choose how much we condemn modern life as the culprit
for rubbish, quantum theory suggests that ‘everything
probably exists everywhere all the time and always did and
always will do’ – so as Christmas Carol says:
“Be good for goodness sake”.
Joy
to the world – Peter
Peter
Hague, 15th December, 2006
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