More and more people around me feel we are living in grim times. Economic stagnation, rising political tensions in, pretty much, every place on Earth and, if this is all not enough, climate change and tensions around it. More and more people feel there is a crisis of values and feel pessimistic about the future. Should they?
In a late interview with BBC Ian Hislop, Private Eye’s editor, was talking about social media spreading fake news and panic, when he mentioned his mother-in-law:
My mother-in-law who said to me «I’ve never been so worried, as I am now, about the world.» And I said «You were a teenager in 1939!», to which she said «Oh yes, so I was!»
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000cwd0/ian-hislops-2019-in-conversation-with-amol-rajan
Couple of months ago, a Polish writer, Olga Tokarczuk, was asked by a BBC reporter if she is optimistic about the future. She replied (redacted):
From my deep nature, I am an optimist. You cannot imagine that anybody who is able to write a 900-page-long book could be a pessimist.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b0bgpqgf
Later this year, she won the Nobel Prize in Literature. During her Nobel lecture, Tokarczuk told us what she believes could restore our faith:
I dream of high viewing points and wide perspectives, where the context goes far beyond what we might have expected. I dream of a language that is capable of expressing the vaguest intuition, I dream of a metaphor that surpasses cultural differences, and finally of a genre that is capacious and transgressive, but that at the same time the readers will love.
I also dream of a new kind of narrator―a “fourth-person” one, who is not merely a grammatical construct of course, but who manages to encompass the perspective of each of the characters, as well as having the capacity to step beyond the horizon of each of them, who sees more and has a wider view, and who is able to ignore time. Oh yes, I think this narrator’s existence is possible.
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/2018/tokarczuk/104871-lecture-english/
The problem Tokarczuk tries to address is the one of exhaustion of values. The cultural, social or religious values shared by our civilisation for centuries and millennia lost their relevance. More of us no longer feels part of any community. We no longer feel represented in politics or popular culture.
This is the very issue residents of a Ugandan village face in a fabulous musical “The Book of Mormon”, which I had a pleasure to watch earlier this month in London. It is a brilliant satire on the irrelevance of religion and its failure to deliver people’s spiritual needs.
Elder Cunningham notices reading the holy book to his African recruits is pointless. They don’t feel how a new religion will change anything about their miserable lives, filled with famine, poverty, AIDS and regular acts of violence from the local warlord.
As a result, Arnold Cunningham ditches the holy book he was supposed to preach. He reaches out to his own, very rich imagination. The myths of his own invention, built on the themes deeply rooted in the popular culture of the 20th and 21st century, resonate with his listeners. They restore their hope and, together, they stand up for themselves.
Arnold helped the villagers in creating a new kind of narration, new metaphors to fill the void left by the values, which no longer represented them.
Tokarczuk, however, wants to go the extra mile to deliver not only a new narration for each community, but a single cross-cultural system of beliefs for the globalised world. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that countries with the longest traditions of multiculturalism are at the forefront for developing such systems.
Doctor Who is not just one of the longest-running TV series. In Britain, it’s an institution. Many Britons feel it’s their source of hope and, quite literally universal, moral values. By saving the Universe, The Doctor shows us how to deal with the unknown. Despite being a Time Lord and having all of time and space on their (i.e. Doctor’s) disposal, The Doctor is just as imperfect as we, the humans. Humans who travel with them, regardless of their ethnicity, age or social status, learn they all have unique abilities, which can save a planet or two.
Crisis of values is an effect of us feeling powerless and lonely. Even surrounded by others, we might still feel we have no one to trust. Media, politicians and some activists often try to exploit these feelings for selfish or outright evil reasons. We need to remember we are never alone with our problems and worries. We need to keep searching for the right environment. One which makes us feel safe and welcome and which gives us confidence to welcome others, regardless of how little background we share.
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