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Let’s
talk about fairy stories. Let me think
about some of the narratives that others have created and which, I think need
challenging. Later I’ll talk about how theatre should be involved in the
process. First, Let me map out some of
the ways I think we are being diverted from the authentic, the plausible and
the genuine and led into a sham world where issues are beyond our grasp. Let
me, for an example, consider the plethora of conspiracy theories and hoaxes I see
promoted on the Internet. Why do we get
so worked up about them? These are flung
about and consumed with the same zeal as Coca Cola and Macdonalds or Dom
Perignon and Heston Blumental’s snail porage and with the same disregard to
nutrition. And despite any evidence to
the contrary, conspiracy theorists will cling on to these ideas like drowning
sailors to a piece of driftwood or politicians to their scrap of power so that
no-one can prise their fingers therefrom.
Here’s a fairy story:
There was once a wicked witch in the West. Originally she was from the
East where she had believed that everything that mattered could be weighed and
measured and there was no need for any of the airy fairy flim flam that so many
mortals worried about. But she had a rather beastly time in the East so she
transported herself on her broomstick to the West where she developed a grudge
against the gooey, sticky parts of mortal life that made her feel unhappy and
she came to want to destroy everything that could not be weighed and
measured. She thought that everybody
else should shut themselves in a cupboard and just go away. But nobody would
listen to her silly ideas so she wrote all her grievances in a little book. And then she died and with her last breath
she cursed the world and wished that all mortals be turned to stone because in
that way they could be weighed and measured. At first, anybody who read her
book laughed at it because it was very silly and childish. (And very badly written.) But one day some
greedy and selfish crooks thought that they would do better out of the world if
greed and selfishness were the made the things to be, so they took the wicked
witch’s silly book and said to all their friends that this book had magic
powers and would change the world as they wanted. And gradually the book was passed around and,
because these men said that the book was true.
Slowly, slowly, the magic spell began to work and a dark shadow was
unleashed upon the whole world because everybody believed that this was true and,
what’s more, how things had to be. And
faster and faster, all the good things that were in people’s hearts like love
and friendship (because the wicked witch had said such things were unfeasibly
gooey and sticky) were replaced by selfishness and greed and hate and fear and
everybody felt unhappy but they didn’t know why. And they began to blame everything that was
good and speak out for the evil things that were now rampaging through the
world even though they were making themselves more and more unhappy. And one of these crooks whispered in the ear
of another powerful witch from another country and she said that everything
that had gone before was now to be forgotten and laughed at. And so it was. The darkness descended on the world like a
thick choking fog. And people had no way
of defending themselves against it and they began to turn to stone because a
stone is easily weighed and measured.
OK
not a very good fairy story but the best I can do. It’s here to illustrate the notion that ideas
can be passed around and believed despite any evidence to the contrary. This is called cognitive bias. We are all cognitively biased one way or
another. There are many things we
believe because… well, because we believe them.
And the unhappiness it causes is called cognitive dissonance.
If
you haven’t guessed already, the originator of all this tale is Russian born
pulp fiction writer, Ayn Rand. In Ayn
Rand’s grindingly awful world stability would be achieved by having no
government and with all individuals concerned only with their own ends.
Altruism would be discounted and only self-interest allowed. What is
frightening is that her bonkers belief became widespread among people who
became big players in Silicon Valley and, eventually, though Alan Greenspan right
into the heart of US government where the ideas brought about the collapse of
two world economies; that of South east Asia in the nineteen nineties and the
whole western economy in 2008. We shudder at this nonsense, these bizarre ideas
of individual isolation one from another which have so thoroughly soaked into
contemporary society through the vectors of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher
the latter who famously said “There is no such thing as society”.
Yes, it’s true, she did actually say that in an interview with Women’s Own
Magazine on 31st October 1987 and it was an idea directly channelled
from Rand.
While
these policies derived some intellectual underpinning from economists such as Friedman and Hayek, it was essentially Rand’s philosophy that was at the
stony heart of the whole enterprise.
And
when this philosophy was put into action it devolved power from governments to
the banks. And the banks had only one
end in view – accumulating money. It was an extraordinary display of open and
naked greed, a great slobbering banquet that continued for years until nearly
every cupboard and fridge was empty whilst the rest of us looked on in
horror. This was Ayn Rand’s philosophy
of self-interest written on a world scale.
And in the end it was the small person who was left with a monstrous
bill for the beanfeast which he or she was absolutely and utterly unable to
dispute. What’s more the small person was made to feel the guilty parties in
this farrago. We feel powerless before
this swelling tide. We cannot cope so we turn our faces to the wall, reach for
the remote control or pound, pound, pound mindlessly along the clifftop and in
the end we do nothing at all about it.
“But,
hey! Hang about!” Says Skidmore looking up from his
drink.. “Here you are banging on about
not believing in conspiracy theories of the world and you’ve just farted out
one of the biggest. The virtual collapse
of Western Civilization brought about by a pulp fiction writer. How come you
can believe in this and not the one about the moon-landings or whatever?” Well, OK., Skidders. You, of course, have me banged to
rights. That is my cognitive bias coming
to the fore. Except that I would defend myself by saying that actually all of
this is well known and documented. The
people involved are open and have discussed it.
They admit to it openly. The perpetrators speak freely about it with
little remorse. The banks did a job and they got away with it, bonuses and all.
So this is a conspiracy that is actually happening now and is a proud part of
modern economics.
OK.
Here is another story and one I was involved in and know, hand on heart,
to be true.
I
was travelling by train down Italy and happened to share a compartment with a
young Swedish guy. He was affable and
easy going but for some reason he felt compelled to show me the contents of his
suitcase. It was literally stuffed full
of bank notes. He happily explained how
he had sold everything he owned and was taking the cash to join a group in
Corfu, the then headquarters of the Scientology movement. I knew nothing about Scientology and he
persuaded me to meet up with him on the island and he would show me round. As it turned out the headquarters was a large
rusting hulk moored in the harbour. The
acolytes, having handed over all their worldly possessions were living and
eating in communal dormitories in fairly Spartan conditions. Nothing strange there. There was any number of weird cults living communal
lives at that time. Except that the
“Clears” the officers or priests or whatever they were, seemed to have a high
old time frequenting the bars and taverns of the town and the founder of the
cult, the science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard was living further down the
quayside in a large white motor yacht draped with bikini-clad lovelies.
Cognitive dissonance on the grandest of grandiose scales. I declined the
opportunity to throw in my lot with them.
And
the same applies to the Nigerian Princess scam and other hoaxes. Apparently the far-fetched nature of the
narrative is designed to eliminate all but the most gullible. The scammers want to weed out anyone who
might cause trouble but for the poor unfortunate who falls for the scheme they
will be drawn gradually into a web of intrigue.
Once you have parted with your details, or even the thousand dollars the
Princess needs to pay bribes, you are hooked and you will put aside your doubts
because you are now afraid of losing your first investment or even from fear
that you will be made to look stupid by not following up on the deal. The
deeper in we get, the more we earnestly believe and the harder it is for
rational thinking to apply.
And
as I dig deeper into this morass I seem to see that what ties this all together
and fuels its onward march is this disengagement I was talking about
earlier. Not only a disengagement from
politics but from humanity itself. All
of these phenomena that I've touched on have their roots in a distancing from,
not only the levers of power, but the actual machinery of common human
existence. The Conspiracy theorists,
The Randists, the Scientologists, the Bankers, the Rhapsodists, the Capitalists
and other hoaxers and scammers. Who can tell them apart? They see a world so maddened that it can be
driven for their own ends. And so they can disseminate their own stories, the
conspiracies, the year zero, the religions, the accumulation of money -
anything to give them some justification for their existence. Their stories spread. We desire an explanation for the entirely
unearned misfortunes that befall us. It seems somehow easier to believe a
complex lie than the simple truth. As Joseph Goebbels is often misquoted as
saying “in the big lie there is always a certain
force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more
easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than
consciously or voluntarily”. In other words “The bigger the lie, the easier it
is to believe.” Thus the welter of
propaganda of the press and the internet is lapped up by people who feel they
simply do not have the time or the resources to cut through to the truth. The stories become the narrative of a
whole people and, as such, they become the truth of the politicians, the
spiritual leaders, the wealthy that they can manipulate to maintain their status.
"We were taught that we were
being persecuted because we were God's chosen people and that the world outside
didn't understand us," Anna Baron The Polygamists Daughter.
So,
Skidmore, I’m going to try to engage
with the world and encourage all other artists to fill the gap that the media,
both official and social, have left or have deliberately avoided.
Theatre
is, and should be the art of engagement.
It is collaborative, social. It
contacts the deepest levels of human experience. But yet I know that if I try
to use my playwriting to counteract this nonsense then I am in danger of losing
my perspective. My own cognitive bias
will become only too apparent and that may not ultimately fit with the
characters I portray. What’s more a one
sided polemic can only be as dull as ditchwater to an audience. I must see and understand. I must engage with my subject matter in a way
that will allow my characters to speak with their own truth. Above all I must let the audience engage with
my characters and tease out a different narrative from the one they might have
accepted up to that point. But in order
to do that, I must follow Nietzsche’s thinking and endeavour to understand
myself first.
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